What grows best in the heat: fantasy; unreason; lust.

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

Humor relieves the tension between what we see or desire but repress in order to sustain a survivable illusion about the world we live in. As such it's always potent stuff, and dangerous.

It is the message, not the man, which is important to the Sufis.

If a problem can be solved by writing a check, it's not a problem, it's an expense.

I want my word to be up to the scale of the feat of arms performed by the Russian soldier.

A sophisticated rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity.

I don't carry lucky charms, but I believe in those things.

Maybe that is the power of poetry. It somehow transcends news cycles, and becomes a part of our collective imagination. That is the beauty of the art form I like to play with.

Larry is back in town...The wedding is set for October. Tammy is threatening to have me in the wedding. Some friends they are.

Microcredit is about giving hope.

Grip the club as if you were holding a baby bird.