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.

There are things you break that can't be put back together again. And Kashmir may be one of them.

The acceptance that all that is solid has melted into the air, that reality and morality are not givens but imperfect human constructs, is the point from which fiction begins.

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

The Republicans were not always insane. They might've had politics I didn't agree with, but they weren't always actually certifiable.

Free societies are societies in motion, and with motion comes friction.

But I - and I just think it's very - one of the problems of defending the extraordinary principle of freedom of speech is that you have to defend freedom of speech for people like that too.