Over time, our inescapable, systemic, fundamentally human impurity gives us the capacity to do what has not been done before: to make creative leaps in our biology, in the diseases we can resist and the foods we can digest. And in our thinking and culture and politics, too.

We are each of us composed of atoms, but equally, we are composed by time.

I think we need to radically reimagine the future - citizens, artist, writers, politicians, everyone.

I feel no desire to write a novel that takes place in the past.

It's very contrary to the notion of what America is to imagine that we can stop migration.

Given enough time, polar bears might migrate off the Arctic ice, evolve darker coats, find a different diet, and thrive in a new, warmer climate. But if the ice on which they depend disappears in a few decades, they are likely to die.

I try to write short novels and leave details out not because I want to be minimalist, but because I think that it enables the readers' creativity and interaction with the book.

I often use nameless places in my work as a way of allowing the readers to create more of the novel and to make it potentially about their experiences, what they know, a city that they have perhaps seen on television.

When the forces are aligning against hybridity, it harms everyone, as we are all migrants. Growing up in Pakistan, I know just how oppressive that kind of puritanical mindset can be.

If you sit back and simply allow your country to be, it is highly unlikely to be the kind of country you want. You have to be active.