Free speech is not just free speech for people you admire. It's also for people who you think of as reprehensible.

Airport security exists to guard us against terrorist attacks.

I grew up in a family in which there was very little religion. My father wasn't religious at all. But he was really interested in the subject of, you know, the birth and growth of Islam. And he basically transmitted that interest to me.

I think the book is less emotional than the film. With the film, the emotions are much more raw and in front. In the book, they are kind of ironized and seen through comedy.

When you write, you write out of your best self. Everything else drops away.

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.

If you're going to write a memoir, try to be as honest and open as you can.