India To Someone Who Lives

A Reader Should Encounter Themselves In A Novel, I Think.

Writing A Novel Is Like An Amusement Park Or A Museum Or A City. You Go Into That Place And You Have Certain Experiences And Those Experiences, Hopefully, Have Some Impact On You.

You Know, Very Often, If You Look At The Kinds Of Communications That They're Getting In An Isis Recruiting Video, The Videos That, You Know, That One Hears Of As Radicalizing Them, These Are Like Action Movies. And So In The Sense, It's That By Closing Off The Idea That Young Muslims And Particularly Young Muslim Men Can Be American Heroes, It Increases The Chance That They'll Try To Be Some Other Kind Of Hero. And That, I Think, Is Entirely Counterproductive.

Many Boys, Probably Most Boys, Have A First Love Before They Fall In Love With A Woman. It Begins The Moment Two Boys Realize They'd Die For One Another, That Each Cares More For The Other Than He Does For Himself, And It Lasts Usually Until A Second Love Comes On The Scene, Because Most Hearts Aren't Big Enough To Love More Than One Person Like That.

As A Society, You Were Unwilling To Reflect Upon The Shared Pain That United You With Those Who Attacked You. You Retreated Into Myths Of Your Own Difference, Assumptions Of Your Own Superiority. And You Acted Out These Beliefs On The Stage Of The World, So That The Entire Planet Was Rocked By The Repercussions Of Your Tantrums, Not Least My Family, Now Facing War Thousands Of Miles Away.