The Chinese are good at repression and can be pretty ruthless about it.

Sometimes people have said that Islam, in its own calendar, is still only in the Middle Ages. It's still in the fifteenth century or whatever. And Christianity in the fifteenth century, after all, was full of inquisitions and burnings at the stake, and so on and so on. So give Islam time, and it will reach the point of maturity that other religions have. But Mormonism is much younger than Islam, and it's got there already. So I don't think that's an argument that works.

I was 21 in 1968, so I'm as much a child of the '60s as is possible to be. In those years the subject of religion had really almost disappeared; the idea that religion was going to be a major force in the life of our societies, in the West anyway, would have seemed absurd in 1968.

A relationship with an imaginary woman is preferable to a relationship with a real one.

You never know the answers to the questions of life until you are asked.

If you're going to write a memoir, try to be as honest and open as you can.

There is a point beyond which conciliation looks like capitulation. I do not believe I passed that point, but others have thought otherwise.