Freedom of speech doesn't guarantee great literature.

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.

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.

I think what's important and extraordinarily practical about Buddhism, is that it offers very concrete methods for people to work with.

It would be one hell of an addition to someone's scrapbook. (Dark City Lights)

I have faith in the judicial system.

PLEONASM, n. An army of words escorting a corporal of thought.

I was sentenced to life plus 30 years by an all-White jury. What I saw in prison was wall-to-wall Black flesh in chains. Women caged in cells. But we're the terrorists. It just doesn't make sense.

... photography is just a medium. It's like a typewriter. Photography as an art doesn't interest me an awful lot; as a participant, though I like to look at it.

She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.

Realism...has no more to do with reality than anything else.

I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.

Every epigram should resemble a bee; it should have sting, honey, and brevity.

I love Mary Poppins - when I was little I was obsessed with it.