Two things form the bedrock of any open society - freedom of expression and rule of law. If you don't have those things, you don't have a free country.

My children are English, and both of their mothers were English.

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

I reluctantly concluded that there was no way for me to help bring into being the Muslim culture I'd dreamed of, the progressive, irreverent, skeptical, argumentative, playful and unafraid culture which is what I've always understood as freedom.... Actually Existing Islam ... which makes literalism a weapon and redescription a crime, will never let the likes of me in.

Nobody ever recognizes themselves unless they are not the character. There are many people who have claimed to be in my books, but unfortunately they were usually people that I didn't know.

Five mysteries hold the keys to the unseen: the act of love, and the birth of a baby, and the contemplation of great art, and being in the presence of death or disaster, and hearing the human voice lifted in song.

If a birth is the fall-out from the explosion caused by the union of two unstable elements, then perhaps a half-life is all we can expect.