Writers from the majority can assume their audiences know what they're talking about - they don't have to explain things, whereas minority writers are expected to.

Every new refugee to a society, whether it's the United States or some other place, is subjected to fear. They are the new outsider population, the new other.

In the United States, the immigrant experience occupies a very central place in American mythology. And sometimes, that place wavers between acceptance and rejection.

Immigrants, as troubling as they are to some people, are an integral part of what the American Dream is supposed to be. They're understandable to a considerable number of Americans.

People might like to think a war is done when a cease fire is signed, but for most people who lived through a war it goes on for decades.

My identity is deeply intertwined with being a refugee because that's the first experience that I remember.

I never called myself a writer because it seemed so pretentious - a writer was what somebody else called you, a title bestowed.

I've never stopped being a refugee.

Hollywood in many ways serves as the unofficial ministry of propaganda for the United States.

If you're a so-called minority writer, the temptation is to write for the majority... I refuse to do that.

No one wants for their child to become a refugee. It's an awful experience.

I am happy that I can aid those admirable men, both living and dead, who by their pens or their tongues have aided the great cause of human liberty and universal happiness.

You must plan your work and then work your plan.

Any man's life, told truly, is a novel.

What I hope my liberal friends (and I have more than a few) take from this pontificate is that mercy and truth are never separable in Catholic pastoral life.

[A photograph] is a part of the evidence. I'm not saying it's the truth - it's part of the evidence.

In this world, where everything happens so fast, it's hard to sit back, take the time and contemplate.

Foolish people are never harmless. Stupidity accounts for as many crimes as anger and greed.

There can never be any real opposition between religion and science; for the one is the complement of the other.

I believe democracy will succeed in Tunisia, but I also believe that it will succeed in the other Arab Spring countries.

You know the disease, you know the remedy, only have faith.