The thing about Iran is there are many political factions and it's not quite the dictatorial, authoritarian state with one person always making every single decision.

It's a tradition in Islamic society to issue pardons at the end of Ramadan.

If you are an [American] politician it's very hard to imagine. "Now we are going to treat these guys as our equals? That's ridiculous. What have they ever done to deserve that?"

Americans tend not to distinguish between political rhetoric and real intentions, which can lead to great misunderstanding.

There's a lack of knowledge about Iran and the Iranian people.

Iran is a huge country and much, much more sophisticated than most people imagine... It certainly has the potential to be at least the way Turkey is to most Americans.

The wrong Democratic reaction to a stupid Republican utterance is to play hurt.

I was born in Iran, left at a very young age - less than a year old - and grew up and was educated in the West.

I mean, we do believe in due process in America. I thought we did.

I know that my cell phone in Iran... is bugged, and they listen in, and my emails, I'm sure, are monitored inside Iran. They have my email address; it's not like they can't snoop on it.

I think that especially in the U.S. there's this kind of sensationalizing of news - and making it almost like CNN and stuff are entertainment networks.

Donald Trump's a bigot without a shadow of a doubt.

If you love a book you tend not to follow its surface value, you follow the other things in it.

All I am I owe to my mother.

I believe people are in our lives for a reason. We're here to learn from each other.

I never had stock endings. I didn't believe in stock endings. To make the [reader] happy was not my objective, but to make the [reader] say, "Yeah, that's what would happen" - that was my objective.

God is so omnipresent. . . . God is an angel in an angel, and a stone in a stone, and a straw in a straw.

Congress never loses its capacity to disappoint you.

I was already a wreck when I went in, and prison nearly destroyed what little was left of me. I was worse when I came out than I was when I went in, and was not positively changed in any way.

In show business, you can't make a living. You can only make a fortune, but you can't make a living.