those who judge must take all aspects of an individual's personality into account.

I would like to say how much I resent people who say of the Islamic Republic that this is our culture - as if women like to be stoned to death, or as if they like to be married at the age of nine.

I see people who talk about America, and then undermine it by not paying attention to its soul, to its poetry. I see polarization, reductionism and superficiality.

There is little consolation in the fact that millions of people are unhappier than we are. Why should other people's misery make us happier or more content?

I am suddenly left alone again on the sunny path, with a memory of the rain.

That, of course, is what great works of imagination do for us: They make us a little restless, destabilize us, question our preconceived notions and formulas.

The crisis besetting America is not just an economic or political crisis; something deeper is wreaking havoc across the land, a mercenary and utilitarian attitude that demonstrates little empathy for people’s actual well-being, that dismisses imagination and thought, branding passion for knowledge as irrelevant.