It's obvious that I come down on the side of free speech for anybody's work.

Very often, people who actually pick up a book of mine for the first time are kind of surprised. And I get these letters saying, well, who knew that you were good, you know?

People must be protected from prejudice against their person. But people cannot be protected from prejudice against their ideas - because otherwise we're all done.

In a novel, if you're any good, you don't just have good people or bad people. You have complicated people. You have real people.

I can walk into a bookshop and point out a number of books that I find very unattractive in what they say. But it doesn't occur to me to burn the bookshop down. If you don't like a book, read another book. If you start reading a book and you decide you don't like it, nobody is telling you to finish it.

I grew up kissing books and bread.

Abraham Zogoiby covered his face that night in August 1939 because he had been assailed by fear, [...] a sudden apprehension that the ugliness of life might defeat its beauty; that love did not make lovers invulnerable. Nevertheless, he thought, even if the world's beauty and love were on the edge of destruction, theirs would still be the only side to be on; defeated love would still be love, hate's victory would not make it other than it was.