Rock and roll music - the music of freedom frightens people and unleashes all manner of conservative defense mechanisms.

I have always thought that these two ways of talking, one is the fantastic, the fable, the fairy tale, and the other being history, the scholarly study of what happened, I think they're both amazing ways to understand human nature.

Cruelty is not a literary value.

When you start writing about the stuff that is the central experience of your own life, you can talk about whatever you want, in whatever way you want.

I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a bad rap from history, and that he was actually a person quite unlike what we now think of as Machiavellian. He was a republican. He disliked totalitarian government.

Raif Badawi's is an important voice for all of us to hear.

I do not envy people who think they have a complete explanation of the world, for the simple reason that they are obviously wrong.