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.

What we search for in fiction is not so much reality, but the epiphany of truth.

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

With fear come the lies and the justifications that, no matter how convincing, lower our self-esteem.

I'm a perfectly equipped failure.

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.

When I was teaching at the University of Tehran we were struggling against the implementation of the revolution rules.