I don't think I've ever quite grown out of it, actually. There was a point where I could recite some of those Elvish verses - which I've mercifully forgotten. But I can still, if really pushed, recite the text of the inside of the ruling ring in the language of Mordor.

People can do bad things with free speech as well as good. You have to defend the Ku Klux Klan as well as Martin Luther King. It's like that. If you're going to defend the principle, then you have to defend people who use the principle badly.

The only way to find out why someone decides to engage in armed combat is to look at their individual personality.

A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.

I remember when I was young, many cities in the Muslim world were cosmopolitan cities with a lot of culture.

I learned: the first lesson of my life: nobody can face the world with his eyes open all the time.

There is no alternative to the peaceful coexistence of cultures.