I write a ridiculous number of drafts. The characters change and grow through the drafting, and my understanding of them deepens. Creating characters in a novel is like shooting at clay pigeons and missing, and then missing more productively as the narrative continues.

I guess if life were fair, people who led decent lives would be rewarded, and people who led indecent lives would not be rewarded.

You have to avoid caricature, at the one end of the spectrum, and sentimentality, at the other; which is not to say that such characters shouldn't be funny part of the time, or that their actions shouldn't evoke genuine feeling.

I guess I'm struck all the time by how outrageously wrong life is. There are times I can't stand to read the newspapers. It makes me insane.

My faith and my identity as a Muslim - I never saw it as something that made my job harder. It's just an aspect of who I am.

When God speaks, oftentimes His voice will call for an act of courage on our part.

Everything that is bad, the falling sickness - God save the mark - or the like, should be at its worst at the full moon. I suppose because it is the leader of the stars.

There's a part in a woman's soul, God has given it to every woman, and it's the part where you know whether he's telling the truth or not. Women see red flags.