If love is a yearning to be like (even to become) the beloved, then hatred, it must be said, can be engendered by the same ambition, when it cannot be fulfilled.

One of the things a writer is for is to say the unsayable, speak the unspeakable and ask difficult questions.

Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be bloody-minded. Argue with the world. And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things--childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves--that go on slipping , like sand, through our fingers.

Among the great struggles of man-good/evil, reason/unreason, etc.-there is also this mighty conflict between the fantasy of Home and the fantasy of Away, the dream of roots and the mirage of the journey.

I learned: the first lesson of my life: nobody can face the world with his eyes open all the time.

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.

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