Prose should have a flow, the forward momentum of a certain energized weight; it should feel like a voice tumbling in your ear.

The muttered hint, "Remember, you have a stroke here," freezes my joints like a blast from Siberia.

Appealingness is inversely proportional to attainability.

We all begin life as parasites within the mother, and writers begin their existence imitatively, within the body of letters.

Mozart's music gives us permission to live.

From the standpoint of a Middle Eastern citizen, Americans look like a bully forcing our way of life on the Islamic way of life. The notion of purity is very important in Islam, and a lot of the negative warlike actions taken against us have to do with our physical presence in the Middle East. Osama bin Laden was trying to get the American, or protesting the American military presence in Saudi Arabia. It's not surprising that our strong presence in Iraq has produced a wave of resistance anger, extreme anger in some cases, and a permissive atmosphere that allows these people to go undetected.

The inner spaces that a good story lets us enter are the old apartments of religion.