A novel is not moral in the usual sense of the word. It can be called moral when it shakes us out of our stupor and makes us confront the absolutes we believe in.

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

I think Islam is in a sense, in crisis. It needs to question and re-question itself.

None of us can avoid being contaminated by the world's evils; it's all a matter of what attitude you take towards them.

I no longer believe that we can keep silent. We never really do, mind you. In one way or another we articulate what has happened to us through the kind of people we become.

America was based on a poetic vision. What will happen when it loses its poetry?

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