I got anxiety in April of 2014. I was hospitalized for two weeks, and they didn't know what was wrong with me, and at the end, they gave me a low dosage of Xanax. Before the whole anti-Xanax message in what I do, I was actually pro-Xanax culture.
The thought of dancing scared me. A lot. Because I have absolutely no aptitude for it.
I had a guidance counsellor who made me take an aptitude test, and told me I should be a bricklayer.
Jack Kerouac influenced me quite a bit as a writer... in the Arab sense that the enemy of my enemy was my friend.
There's a certain kind of behavior in the Arab world that, to me, resembles the way young men behave when there is no significant influence from women in their lives.
The Arab Spring reminds me a bit of the decolonisation process where one country gets independence, and everybody else wants it.
During the Arab Spring, I learned all sorts of things from Twitter. I wouldn't necessarily trust that information, but it gave me ideas about questions to ask. You can really learn things from the wisdom of crowds.
I want a future where my children feel safe and appreciated and proud to be who they are. My heart is one with all the Arab Spring heroes, no matter how small they think their role is. I know they believe, like me, that we are working for a world whereby an Arab can live with the other in a respectful and dignified way.
Many occasions I've sat down with Israelis to say, where do you see your country in 10 years time, and work me back, so we can figure out the synergies and the connections between Israel and the rest of the Arab world. No Israeli has ever been able to answer that question.
I'm amazed by the misconceptions about Muslim women and the Arab world that I hear, and that really does hurt me.
My mother might find a thin gold chain at the back of a drawer, wadded into an impossibly tight knot, and give it to me to untangle. It would have a shiny, sweaty smell, and excite me: Gold chains linked you to the great fairy tales and myths, to Arabia, and India; to the great weight of the world, but lighter than a feather.
'Khalifa' is Arabic, it means successor, leader, shining light. My granddad is Muslim and he gave me that name.
My birth at the end of July 1967 makes me a child of the naksa, or setback, as the Arab defeat during the June 1967 war with Israel is euphemistically known in Arabic.
Chairman Arafat has invited me several times to visit him in Ramallah and to see El Bireh again.
I have to feel myself doing what's right. If I'm the arbiter of that instead of letting the guy on TV be that or someone who doesn't know me at all, then I think that's a much better way to live.
The single despot stands out in the face of all men, and says: I am the State: My will is law: I am your master: I take the responsibility of my acts: The only arbiter I acknowledge is the sword: If any one denies my right, let him try conclusions with me.
I try to very hard to avoid a situation where I would be eating cat or dog; I've managed to gracefully avoid that. It's hypocritical of me and an arbitrary line, but one that I have managed to avoid crossing.
The loveliest roles, for me, have a growth arc - a beginning, a middle, and an end - and I'm always grateful when I can find one of those emotional journeys.
The truth is that all civic and social change is friction. Politics is friction. The only way you can bend the arc of history is to create that kind of friction, which is something that makes most people incredibly uncomfortable but which, for whatever reason, because of my upbringing or because of my genetics, is something that doesn't bug me.
Defenses had to play us, obviously, out to the arc, but it was really, to me, my mid-range game that was probably more dangerous than my 3-point shot.
