I'm generalizing wildly, but academic books find safety in explanations that reduce the chaos of social life.

Bad writing as a conscious goal is liberating for students: They are freed to be creative in a new and different way.

We take literature too seriously.

With non-fiction, there is the struggle to be accurate. With fiction, it is a bit different: the desire to let imagination take you to new places.

I identify in some measure with each of my characters.

You ask a politician a question, like, why they ran in an election, and you'll hear, I assume, something about wanting to contribute to the community or bring about social justice. I had no such high goals.

In the U.S., the FBI or the people I met from the Department of Justice might be ignorant about Islam or about the East more generally, but I felt they were less willing to make blanket judgments about Muslims. This caution was less evident with some of the authorities I met in India.

Long ago, when I was in higher secondary school in Delhi, I read an essay by George Orwell in which he said there was a voice in his head that put into words everything he was seeing. I realised I did that, too, or maybe I started doing it in imitation.

Much of what we regard as truth in the war on terror is actually rather suspect.

My favourite writer is John Maxwell Coetzee.