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

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

Original thought, original artistic expression is by its very nature questioning, irreverent, iconoclastic.

Five mysteries hold the keys to the unseen: the act of love, and the birth of a baby, and the contemplation of great art, and being in the presence of death or disaster, and hearing the human voice lifted in song.

What one writer can make in the solitude of one room is something no power can easily destroy.

A sigh isn't just a sigh. We inhale the world and breathe out meaning. While we can. While we can.

If terrorism is to be defeated, the world of Islam must take on board the secularist-humanist principles on which the modern is based, and without which their countries' freedom will remain a distant dream.