I grew up kissing books and bread.

Free speech is not just free speech for people you admire. It's also for people who you think of as reprehensible.

A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.

I have a general feeling that writers and artists who are in this peculiar situation, of being a persecuted artist, all anyone ever asks about is the persecution. It may well be that's the last thing in the world they want to talk about. There were many years in which every journalist in the world wanted to talk to me, but nobody wanted to talk to me about my work. That felt deeply frustrating because I felt there was an attempt to stifle me as an artist. The best revenge I could have was to write.

The real risks for any artist are taken in pushing the work to the limits of what is possible, in the attempt to increase the sum of what it is possible to think. Books become good when they go to this edge and risk falling over it -when they endanger the artist by reason of what he has, or has not, artistically dared.

Raif Badawi's is an important voice for all of us to hear.

If you actually want to change your world, there is a better way of doing it than blowing yourself up.