Pakistan has to export a lot of uneducated people, many of whom have become infected with the most barbaric reactionary ideas.

The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has—from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness.

It's impossible, I think, however much I'd become disillusioned politically or evolve into a post-political person, I don't think I'd ever change my view that socialism is the best political moment humans have ever come up with.

I don't think it's possible to have a sense of tragedy without having a sense of humor.

North Korea is a necrocracy, or a mauselocracy or a thanatocracy in which the one [Kim Il-sung] is diffused into being with the other [Kim Jong Il], and where both of them are said to have had miraculous births attended by miraculous phenomena such as, for example, birds singing in Korean, when they were born.

Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and - since there is no other metaphor - also the soul.

A wide and vague impression exists that so-called Eastern religion is more contemplative, innocuous, and humane than the proselytizing monotheisms of the West. Don't believe a word of this: try asking the children of Indochina who were dumped by their parents for inherited deformities that were attributed to sins in a previous 'life.