Sometimes the dead are more alive than the living. And they can kill the living.

Physical courage is a great test.

I leave shreds of my soul on every experience.

To be good or bad doesn't count: life out in this world doesn't depend on that. It depends on a relation of forces based on violence. And survival is violence. You'll wear leather shoes because someone has killed a cow and skinned it to make leather.

Glory is a heavy burden, a murdering poison, and to bear it is an art. And to have that art is rare.

We are an age without leaders. We stopped having leaders at the end of the 20th century

Khomeini was not a puppet like Arafat or Qaddafi or the many other dictators I met in the Islamic world. He was a sort of Pope, a sort of king - a real leader.