But love is what we want, not freedom. Who then is the unluckier man? The beloved, who is given his heart's desire and must for ever after fear its loss, or the free man, with his unlooked-for liberty, naked and alone between the captive armies of the earth?

The Koran was revealed at a time of great change in the Arab world, the seventh-century shift from a matriarchal nomadic culture to an urban patriarchal system.

Something was badly amiss with the spiritual life of the planet...Too many demons inside people claiming to believe in God.

Originality is dangerous. It challenges, questions, overturns assumptions, unsettles moral codes.

I seem to have fallen for women with missing parents. Goodness knows what it signifies.

Among the great struggles of man-good/evil, reason/unreason, etc.-there is also this mighty conflict between the fantasy of Home and the fantasy of Away, the dream of roots and the mirage of the journey.

I do think that there is such a thing as human nature, and that the things that we have in common are perhaps greater than the things that divide us.