My wife thinks a B&B is a romantic getaway. I think it's creepy, sharing coffee with strangers who were eavesdropping on you the night before.

It was an arranged marriage, put together by drugs and alcohol.

In the ‘looks of disappointment’ department, my cat has picked up where my father left off.

Wars are all fought by men who either believe they are right or who have no other choice. How they fight defines who they are when the blood stops flowing.

The world will always choose convenience over reality. It's easier to hate, blame, and fear than it is to understand. No one wants the truth; they want entertainment.

Work is the best thing to make us love life.

I mean I have had a very combative relationship with critics because I'm very impatient with people that don't give my work the respect I feel it deserves.

Anybody who has watched government from the inside recognizes that governments need institutions, need ways to respond to crises.

Two sources of success are known: wisdom and effort; make them both thine own, if thou wouldst haply rise.

I grew up during the Revolution of Iran and the war between Iran and Iraq. The things that I saw. The impact. How it changes you. How it changes the way you look at the world.

Cruelties should be committed all at once.

Technology, in short, cannot teach me how to do without technology.

As for my next book, I won't write it till it has grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear; pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall.