What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry.

My grandmother was very fierce and gruff. She was quite small, but she was very wide.

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

Islam is unusual in that it's the only one of the great world religions which was born inside recorded history. That there's an enormous amount of factual historical record about the life of a prophet and about social conditions in Arabia at that time. So it's possible to look at the origin of Islam in a scholarly way.

Pakistan is alarmed by the rising Indian influence in Afghanistan, and fears that an Afghanistan cleansed of the Taliban would be an Indian client state, thus sandwiching Pakistan between two hostile countries. The paranoia of Pakistan about India's supposed dark machinations should never be underestimated.

People are always telling me that they've seen people reading my books on the subway, or the beach, or whenever.

One of the problems with defending free speech is you often have to defend people that you find to be outrageous and unpleasant and disgusting.