‘Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.

I'm definitely post-something.

I don't dictate to anyone what to believe and what not to. And I don't want that to be dictated to me either.

Islam is unusual in that it's the only one of the great world religions which was born inside recorded history. That there's an enormous amount of factual historical record about the life of a prophet and about social conditions in Arabia at that time. So it's possible to look at the origin of Islam in a scholarly way.

A man who catches History's eye is thereafter bound to a mistress from whom he will never escape.

Live on, survive, for the earth gives forth wonders. It may swallow your heart, but the wonders keep on coming. You stand before them bareheaded, shriven. What is expected of you is attention.

Original thought, original artistic expression is by its very nature questioning, irreverent, iconoclastic.