How fragile we are under the sheltering sky. Behind the sheltering sky is a vast dark universe, and we're just so small.

Everyone is isolated from everyone else. The concept of society is like a cushion to protect us from the knowledge of that isolation. A fiction that serves as an anesthetic.

Since the world began has any man ever been able to know what would happen tomorrow? The world of men is today. I'm asking you to open your heart today. Tomorrow belongs to Allah.

We've never managed, either one of us, to get all the way into life. We're hanging on to the outside for all we're worth, convinced we're going to fall off at the next bump.

The only thing that makes life worth living is the possibility of experiencing now and then a perfect moment. And perhaps even more than that, it's having the ability to recall such moments in their totality, to contemplate them like jewels.

Each time I go to a place I have not seen before I hope it will be as different as possible from the places I already know. I assume it is natural for a traveler to seek diversity, and that it is the human element that makes him most aware of difference. If people and their manner of living were alike everywhere, there would not be much point in moving from one place to another.

Fiction should always steer clear of political considerations.