The negative side of the American Dream comes when people pursue success at any cost, which in turn destroys the vision and the dream.

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

Empathy lies at the heart of Gatsby, like so many other great novels-the biggest sin is to be blind to others problems and pains. Not seeing them means denying their existence.

Reality has become so intolerable, she said, so bleak, that all I can paint now are the colors of my dreams.

The worst crime committed by totalitarian mind-sets is that they force their citizens, including their victims, to become complicit in their crimes. Dancing with your jailer, participating in your own execution, that is an act of utmost brutality.

Basically, fundamentalism is a modern phenomenon. In the same way that Hitler evoked a mythological religion of German purity and the glory of the past, the Islamists use religion to evoke emotions and passions in people who have been oppressed for a long time in order to reach their purpose.

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