One of the problems with defending free speech is you often have to defend people that you find to be outrageous and unpleasant and disgusting.

If the creative artist worries if he will still be free tomorrow, then he will not be free today.

The suicide bomber's imagination leads him to believe in a brilliant act of heroism, when in fact he is simply blowing himself up pointlessly and taking other people's lives.

The world is about the way in which our dreams intersect with our real life. Endlessly, the world of the imagination changes the world.

Why obliterate the exceptional merely in order to make the outstanding look finer than it was?

In the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the nonbelongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks.

All art began as sacred art, you know? I mean, all painting began as religious painting. All writing began as religious writing.