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

There are things you break that can't be put back together again. And Kashmir may be one of them.

Rock and roll music - the music of freedom frightens people and unleashes all manner of conservative defense mechanisms.

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.

One of the extraordinary things about human events is that the unthinkable becomes thinkable.

Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.

‘Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.

In the cookie of life, friends are the chocolate chips.

Language upon a silvered tongue affords enchantment enough.

The whole story of migration and what that has done in interconnecting the planet is obviously something I've written about a lot.

faith without doubt is addiction

Let all the green leaves be mineas long as the trees define shades created by their limbsfor the soil made with victimsof atrocity's vileness to redeem the fragileness

People often think of Haiti as a place where you're not supposed to have any joy. I wanted to show that this is a place with joy.

Yoga does things with the human body that defy the imagination.

You cannot imagine how it spoils one to have been a child prodigy.

Seldom do we talk of ourselves with success. If I condemn myself, more is believed than is expressed; if I praise myself, much less.

I just have a great life. I know great people. I've had great relationships - all different kinds of relationships. I am so lucky to be on the little golden path that led me to all this.

The mines of knowledge are often laid bare by the hazel-wand of chance.

The critic who justly admires all kinds of things simultaneously cannot love any one of them.

[Osip] Mandelstam was killed by Stalinist forces.

I was named after my mother's maiden name.