A little bit of one story joins onto an idea from another, and hey presto, . . . not old tales but new ones. Nothing comes from nothing.

Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.

YouTube is full of pieces of trash. If you want to look on YouTube and find something that insults you, you can probably find it.

Islam doesn't have to mean blind faith. It can mean what it always meant in your family, a culture, a civilization, as open-minded as your grandfather was, as delightedly disputatious as your father was.... Don't let the zealots make Muslim a terrifying word, I urged myself; remember when it meant family.

I grew up in a family in which there was very little religion. My father wasn't religious at all. But he was really interested in the subject of, you know, the birth and growth of Islam. And he basically transmitted that interest to me.

Sometimes we feel we straddle two cultures; at other times, that we fall between two stools.

A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.