Buddhism resonated very powerfully with a lot of my preoccupations.

Gandhi saw how people have to re-think their own individuality before engaging in political activity. Otherwise they're just playing the game that the adversary has set out.

In America, you don't even have proper holidays. It's really one of the most prosperous slave societies in history. People work their asses off all year long and get two weeks off! It's incredible.

The people who encouraged me weren't necessarily writers or readers themselves. They were people who were just pleased to see me devote my life to reading and writing.

I found it really disturbing to see a novelist writing a diatribe about Islam and Muslim radical extremists, blurring the distinction between the two.

The idea that human beings can make history, that is something quite unique to the modern West.

We need to infuse politics with ideas like compassion and empathy, and a sense that we live in an interdependent world.

The asymmetries of power that have shaped relations between the West and the rest of the world also exist in the realm of literary criticism.

Most suffering is human-made and avoidable. It's mostly in your head.

Freedom of speech doesn't guarantee great literature.

In the modern world, nationalism remains a very important force. We delude ourselves into thinking that globalization has made all of that redundant and that everyone just wants to be like America.

Happiness lies in making the environment happy.

What do I haveto help me, without spell or prayer,endure this hour, endless, heartless, anonymous,the death of love?

[Donald] Trump is not going to win... He's losing to Hillary [Clinton] in the latest polling.

It was sad and fierce all at once, alive with a lonely purity.

One of the most important things, actually, when you're playing on grass, is to move.

Every single time I read a script I'm breathless as I turn the pages.

These 150-minute superhero films that Hollywood is making are so concerned with their length that each scene doesn't have the time it needs to make sense.

Queen Guenever, for whom I make here a little mention, that while she lived she was a true lover, and therefore she had a good end.

I have a couple of thousand books in my personal library. Choosing a favorite is next to impossible. But I do love the written word.

We are called not simply to communicate the gospel to nonbelievers; we must also intentionally celebrate the gospel before them.