The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas - uncertainty, progress, change - into crimes.

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

The difference between the vanity of a Frenchman and an Englishman seems to be this: The one thinks everything right that is French the other thinks everything wrong that is not English.

You can't change what happened. Just like you can't change the future by worrying about it. You just have to keep moving.

I have certainly had my share of long-distance love affairs.

I only sleep with people I love, which is why I have insomnia.

How strange! I thought, though everybody hated and despised each other, they could not avoid loving me.

The fault finder will find faults even in paradise and thereby miss the joys that recognition of the positives bring.

Man, like a light in the night, is kindled and put out.

Ninety percent of our managers started in the hourly ranks or started in the lower ranks.

Even with painting, even abstract paintings, you need the incoming of, light on the canvas.

If people ask me about it, I think it would be great for me to be like, 'Look, [Kanye West] called me and told me the line before it came out. Like, joke's on you guys, we're fine'.