One of the things novels should do is shine a light on those parts of us that are common, the fibres that connect all of us. They should convey the sense that we're all connected, coming from the same tree, sharing common roots.

Everyone is an ocean inside. Every individual walking the street. Everyone is a universe of thoughts, and insights, and feelings. But every person is crippled in his or her own way by our inability to truly present ourselves to the world.

I remember reading 'The Grapes of Wrath' in high school in 1983. My family had immigrated to the U.S. three years before, and I had spent the better part of the first two years learning English. John Steinbeck's book was the first book I read in English where I had an 'Aha!' moment, namely in the famed turtle chapter.

My memories of Kabul are vastly different than the way it is when I go there now. My memories are of the final years before everything changed. When I grew up in Kabul, it couldn't be mistaken for Beirut or Tehran, as it was still in a country that's essentially religious and conservative, but it was suprisingly progressive and liberal.

Film is something that came later into my life. I had a Jesuit education, and I consider acting and the theater as kind of a calling - a vocation.

With film music, endings are often more difficult than beginnings, because a beginning is an underline, a way of exciting a moment, and then you have to find a way to dissipate that.

If he's a true symphony artist, he knows better than that because he knows that the only truly creative musician is the jazz musician.

Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.