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

Ideas are interesting to me, and religions are a place where ideas have been very subtly embodied for thousands of years. All literature started as sacred literature.

If Islam is to be reconciled with modernity, these voices must be encouraged until they swell into a roar.

Nothing comes from nothing, Thieflet; no story comes from nowhere; new stories are born from old--it is the new combinations that make them new.

I think it's a very important function of art to challenge accepted reality, especially when that reality is created by powerful interest groups.

No, I don't think it's fair to label Islam 'violent.' But I will say that to my knowledge, no writer has ever gone into hiding for criticizing the Amish.

Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory.