I have had many more close women friends than men, and I've always assumed that comes from the fact that in my family there was such a disproportionate female element.

He knew what he knew: that the real world was full of magic, so magical worlds could easily be real.

One of the strange things about violent and authoritarian regimes is they don't like the glare of negative publicity.

If you have children you worry about the world you're leaving them.

Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart.

What is needed is a move beyond tradition, nothing less than a reform movement to bring the core concepts of Islam into the modern age, a Muslim Reformation to combat not only the jihadist ideologues but also the dusty, stifling seminaries of the traditionalists, throwing open the windows to let in much-needed fresh air.... It is high time, for starters, that Muslims were able to study the revelation of their religion as an event inside history, not supernaturally above it.... Broad-mindedness is related to tolerance; open-mindedness is the sibling of peace.

I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a bad rap from history, and that he was actually a person quite unlike what we now think of as Machiavellian. He was a republican. He disliked totalitarian government.