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

People can do bad things with free speech as well as good. You have to defend the Ku Klux Klan as well as Martin Luther King. It's like that. If you're going to defend the principle, then you have to defend people who use the principle badly.

A thing that happens to migrants is that they lose many of the traditional things which root identity, which root the self.

The PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award is a way of spotlighting individual cases. If you look at the history of the award, the freedom rate is very high: a very high percentage of people who receive those awards are freed in the next six months to a year. The only weapon there is attention, but interestingly it works.

The West should be tougher on Pakistan. It is trying to play both ends against the middle - to look like the friend of the revolutionaries on the one hand and a friend of the West in the fight against terrorism. It can't be both things.

Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.

The USA approach looks like bullying because it is.