faith without doubt is addiction

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.

I don't dictate to anyone what to believe and what not to. And I don't want that to be dictated to me either.

The Koran was revealed at a time of great change in the Arab world, the seventh-century shift from a matriarchal nomadic culture to an urban patriarchal system.

Games sometimes require lateral thinking. They sometimes require quite skilled hand-eye coordination and so on. But they're not in any sense intelligent in the way that you want your children to develop intelligence to make the mind not just supple, but actually informed.

A man who invents himself needs someone to believe in him... Not only the need to be believed in, but the need to believe in another. You've got it: Love.

One of the things I've learnt is not to depend on there being a woman in your life to make it work. I love my work, I love my children, I've got wonderful friends, you know, I have a nice life.