Even when things are at their worst, there's a little voice in your head saying, 'Good story!'

It's so disappointing, to put it mildly, that people know so much about my life. Because it means that they're always trying to look at my books in terms of my life.

Where there is no belief, there is no blasphemy.

Unfortunately, the problem of the free speech argument is that you have to defend people you can't stand.

To be born again,' sang Gibreal Farishta tumbling from the heaveans, 'first you have to die. Ho ji! Ho ji! To land upon the bosomy earth, first one needs to fly Tat-taa! Takatun! How to ever smile again, if first you won't cry? How to win the darling's love mister, without a sigh?

Captain Ahab drowned, he reminded himself; it was the trimmer, Ishmael, who survived.

I am on Facebook, but mainly as a way to spy on my children. I find out more about them from their Facebook pages than from what they tell me.