Truth is relative, and there is always something missing in truth that prevents it from being perfect.

There is a proverb that says, ‘Talk so that I may know who you are.’ But I say, ‘Show me your eyes and I will know who you are.

To me, 'beauty' means to be natural, creative, honest - to say the truth.

Yet not for a single moment did I have any doubts about my own integrity and honour as a woman. I knew that my profession had been invented by men, and that men were in control of both our worlds, the one on earth, and the one in heaven. That men force women to sell their bodies at a price, and that the lowest paid body is that of a wife. All women are prostitutes of one kind or another.

I've lived in Egypt among Christians and Muslims, and we never had a conflict. Now you have a conflict between Christians and Muslims and Baha'is and Sunni and Shia.

First of all, all writing includes some part of the self. The relationship of the self and the other exists in writing, whether autobiographical or novel. There is a self and an other.

We never know the reality of things: we see only what we are aware of. It is our consciousness that determines the shape of the world around us -- its size, motion and meaning.