Live on, survive, for the earth gives forth wonders. It may swallow your heart, but the wonders keep on coming. You stand before them bareheaded, shriven. What is expected of you is attention.

Too many people had spent too long demonizing or totemizing me to listen seriously to what I had to say.

If there is a choice between absolute safety and freedom, then freedom must always prevail.

American literature has always been immigrant.

I for one don't need a supreme "sacred" arbiter in order to be a moral being.

I grew up in a family in which there was very little religion. My father wasn't religious at all. But he was really interested in the subject of, you know, the birth and growth of Islam. And he basically transmitted that interest to me.

Vertigo is the conflict between the fear of falling and the desire to fall.