In the end, the thing that's important about free expression is that it's the right from which all other rights are derived. If you can't articulate ideas and if you can't articulate critiques of other peoples' ideas, then you're powerless. What always increases the power of an authoritarian regime is whether it can successfully prevent people from expressing themselves.

I think that a lot of us, whether we are religious or not - there are no words to express some things except religious words. For instance, 'soul.'

If Woody Allen were a Muslim, he'd be dead by now.

It's so disappointing, to put it mildly, that people know so much about my life. Because it means that they're always trying to look at my books in terms of my life.

Nobody wants to read a 600 page book in which the author is fabulous throughout.

We live in a frightened time, and people self-censor all the time and are afraid of going into some subjects because they are worried about violent reactions.

How to forgive the world for its beauty, which merely disguises its ugliness; for its gentleness, which merely cloaks its cruelty; for its illusion of continuity, seamlessly, as the night follows the day, so to speak- whereas in reality life is a series of brutal raptures, falling upon your defenseless hands, like the blows of a woodman's axe?