If Islam is to be reconciled with modernity, these voices must be encouraged until they swell into a roar.

If you're offended, it's your problem.

This strange business of what it is to be a writer is this increasingly insane world in which we live, in which surrealism, it seems, is the new realism.

In general, writers shouldn't be killed for what they write, though I can think of exceptions.

Anyone who has had the experience of going through American security checks knows the purpose of these checks is not to make you safer; it's just to annoy you.

If love is a yearning to be like (even to become) the beloved, then hatred, it must be said, can be engendered by the same ambition, when it cannot be fulfilled.

There is a point beyond which conciliation looks like capitulation. I do not believe I passed that point, but others have thought otherwise.