I've always prided myself on my discipline as a writer. I do it like a job. I get up in the morning and go to my desk.

I remember when I was young, many cities in the Muslim world were cosmopolitan cities with a lot of culture.

Where there is no belief, there is no blasphemy.

I think it's a very important function of art to challenge accepted reality, especially when that reality is created by powerful interest groups.

One of the things I do take some pride in is that if you had never read an article about my life, if you knew nothing about me, except that my books were being set in front of you to read, and if you were to read those books in sequence, I don't think you would say to yourself, 'Oh my God, something terrible happened to this writer in 1989.'

A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.

What kind of idea are you? Are you the kind that compromises, does deals, accomodates itself to society, aims to find a niche, to survive; or are you the cussed, bloody-minded, ramrod-backed type of damnfool notion that would rather break than sway with the breeze? – The kind that will almost certainly, ninety-nine times out of hundred, be smashed to bits; but, the hundredth time, will change the world.