I do not need the idea of God to explain the world I live in.

Once you have been in an earthquake you know, even if you survive without a scratch, that like a stroke in the heart, it remains in the earth's breast, horribly potential, always promising to return, to hit you again, with an even more devastating force.

I'm a big-city boy. What I like is big cities. It's not just what I like. It's what I write about.

Some people are paralyzed by the consciousness of death, other people live with it.... The fatwa certainly made me think about it a lot more than I ever had. I guess I know I'm going to die, but then, so are you.

Our lives are not what we deserve; they are, let us agree, in many ways deficient.

Sometimes people have said that Islam, in its own calendar, is still only in the Middle Ages.

I hate admitting that my enemies have a point.