It [9/11 event] transcended the political and moved into the metaphysical. There was a kind of cosmic, demonic quality of mind at work here, which refused to have any interest in dialogue and political organization and persuasion.

I don't remember when exactly I read my first comic book, but I do remember exactly how liberated and subversive I felt as a result.

[Mujahedeen], by the way, don't represent Islam in any formal sense. They're not imams or sheiks. They are self-appointed warriors for Islam.

Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient—dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.

Beginning is not only a kind of action. It is also a frame of mind, a kind of work, an attitude, a consciousness.

And what terrifies me is that we're entering a phase where if you start to speak about this as something that can be understood historically - without any sympathy - you are going to be thought of as unpatriotic, and you are going to be forbidden. It's very dangerous. It is precisely incumbent on every citizen to quite understand the world we're living in and the history we are a part of and we are forming as a superpower.

[9/11] was bloody-minded destruction for no other reason than to do it.