I hate admitting that my enemies have a point.

I make no complaint. I am a writer. I do not accept my condition; I will strive to change it; but I inhabit it, I am trying to learn from it.

One of the strange things about violent and authoritarian regimes is they don't like the glare of negative publicity.

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.

One of the things I know from the study of history is that history surprises you. History is not written. It's not inevitable.The victory of evil is not certain.

Speaking as somebody with three sisters and a very largely female Muslim family, there is not a single woman I know in my family or in their friends who would have accepted the wearing of a veil.

The people suffering most from the Taliban were Afghans.