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.

Memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else's version more than his own.

Broad-mindedness is related to tolerance; open-mindedness is the sibling of peace.

Fundamentalists of all faiths are the fundamental evil of our time.

In any authoritarian society, the possessor of power dictates, and if you try and step outside, he will come after you. This is equally true of Sovietism, of China and of Iran, and in our time it has happened a lot in Islam. The point is that it's worse when the authoritarianism is supported by something supernatural.

Bread and books: food for the body and food for the soul - what could be more worthy of our respect, and even love?

Free speech is life itself.