A man who invents himself needs someone to believe in him... Not only the need to be believed in, but the need to believe in another. You've got it: Love.

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

Writers have an opinion about the world and offer arguments about the world. They should offer contemplation.

It seems that the right of freedom of speech that was enshrined in numerous constitutions is now under attack by religious institutions.

Speaking as somebody with three sisters and a very largely female Muslim family, there is not a single woman I know in my family or in their friends who would have accepted the wearing of a veil.

Some people are paralyzed by the consciousness of death, other people live with it.... The fatwa certainly made me think about it a lot more than I ever had. I guess I know I'm going to die, but then, so are you.

Doubt, it seems to me, is the central condition of a human being in the twentieth century.