Look at Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution and the slogans that they used: anti-imperialism; anti-colonialism; the struggle of the have-nots against the haves; the state monopoly over economy, which was very much patterned after the Soviet Union. All of these things did not come out of Islam. Islam is not that developed.

Khatami is a symptom and not the cause of change in Iran.

Every fairy tale offers the potential to surpass present limits, so in a sense the fairy tale offers you freedoms that reality denies.

A bad author can take the most moral issue and make you want to just never, ever think about that moral issue.

I'm a perfectly equipped failure.

Most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home. The best fiction always forced us to question what we took for granted. It questioned traditions and expectations when they seemed to immutable.

Every great work of art ... is a celebration, an act of insubordination against the betrayals, horrors and infidelities of life.