The question I'm always asking myself is: are we masters or victims? Do we make history, or does history make us? Do we shape the world, or are we just shaped by it? The question of do we have agency in our lives or whether we are just passive victims of events is, I think, a great question, and one that I have always tried to ask.

Broad-mindedness is related to tolerance; open-mindedness is the sibling of peace.

It's true that the human body is more vulnerable than the products of the human mind.

Liberate yourself, because no one else is going to liberate you

The answer to religion is not no religion, but another way of thinking of it. Another way of being in it.

The world, somebody wrote, is the place we prove real by dying in it.

If I had simply wanted to trade on an insult to Islam, I could have done it in a sentence rather than writing a 250,000-word novel, a work of fiction.