We were language's magpies by nature, stealing whatever sounded bright and shiny.

You can't have modern states based on ideas which have been out of date for a thousand years.

I always thought the front line was the bookstores. And bookstores around America, around the world did astonishingly well. They held the line. They didn't chicken out. You know, they defended the book. They kept it in the front of the store.

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

Nobody wants to read a 600 page book in which the author is fabulous throughout.

After a long, hopeless war, people will settle for peace, at almost any price.

Question: What is the opposite of faith? Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself is a kind of belief. Doubt.