"I wrote the Light of What We Know here ..(at Yaddo), over several long stays. I'm not sure where I would have written it otherwise. I've been homeless since 2007, all my few possessions put into storage before I set off to travel across Europe and Asia. My journey was interrupted because of the deaths of loved ones and it was within the interruption that I began and finished writing the novel. Yaddo, I was told, might be a good place to write. ... Yaddo turned out to suit me perfectly. A stately home—not English privilege but a Scooby Doo mansion—with woodlands, three lakes and magical charm, this charitable foundation has for a hundred years been host to giants such as James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Sylvia Plath and Truman Capote. I'm still homeless and have yet to resume my broken travels, but wherever I go, I know that Yaddo and its 400-acre stretch of God's own country was always a kind of home to me and helped to nurture In the Light of What We Know."

"I oscillate between loathing Vladimir Nabokov ’s novels (when I think he’s showing off or insisting on making his presence felt) and loving them. This morning, I can’t stand a word of his fiction. But Nabokov’s “Letters to Vera” is not fiction. The showing off, such as there is, is that of a man to his lover, whose absence is felt. The fact that these are the words—such beautiful words—of a writer to his beloved of more than 46 years readies you for the spirit of sincerity in which they were written. Besides, I’m a sucker for a love story."

"If the prophets were to be elected by the "popular votes" of democracy, then no prophet could have ever been a prophet."

"The Objective of Ahlehadeeth movement is to propagate and inculcate pure Tawheed in all spheres of life by following exact instructions of Kitab and Sunnah to gain satisfaction of Allah. The social and political objectives of Ahl-i-Hadeeth Movement is to bring about all round reforms of the society through ensuring the rectification of Aqeedah and 'Amal (i.e. faith & deeds)"

"We want to establish such an Islamic society, where there shall be appeared no heterogeneous isms in the name of progressiveness, nor any Mazhabi parochialism in the name of Islam."

"Islam is not a secularist ideology, nor a scholastic theology, nor a blind imitation to any saint or a person, rather its a religion of divine revelation, which has been descended down directly from 'Lawhe Mahfuz" (Divine reserved board). Islam is not which comes out the human rationalism. Many things of Islam might not be agreeable with your rationality, but you have to make unconditional submission to it. This is Islam, the religion of total submission."