When we live in a world that is very unjust, you have to be a dissident.

To be creative means to connect. It's to abolish the gap between the body, the mind and the soul, between science and art, between fiction and nonfiction.

Women are half the society. You cannot have a revolution without women. You cannot have democracy without women. You cannot have equality without women. You can't have anything without women.

Danger has been a part of my life ever since I picked up a pen and wrote. Nothing is more perilous than truth in a world that lies.

She is free to do what she wants, and free not to do it.

Solidarity between women can be a powerful force of change, and can influence future development in ways favourable not only to women but also to men.

All the men I did get to know, every single man of them, has filled me with but one desire: to lift my hand and bring it smashing down on his face.

If you are creative, you must be dissident.

To have arrived at the truth means that one no longer fears death. For death and truth are similar in that they both require a great courage if one wishes to face them.

To me, 'beauty' means to be natural, creative, honest - to say the truth.

Everybody has to die, Firdaus. I will die, and you will die. The important thing is how to live until you die.

When I see an evil person, I cannot believe that once he was an innocent and sweet baby.

Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other ­people. Nothing that happens to a writer – however happy, however tragic – is ever wasted.

I didn't want to take it. I knew it was a powerful drug, but I also knew it was a catabolic drug that consumed the body.

When a gift is deserved, it is not a gift but a payment.

I don't want to say [the teams] are mirror images of each other, ... but there's a lot of similarities on both sides of the ball.

It's no surprise that things are so screwed up: everyone that knows how to run a government is either driving taxicabs or cutting hair.

Duty is what goes most against the grain, because in doing that we do only what we are strictly obliged to, and are seldom much praised for it.

It is not the business of virtue to extirpate the affections of the mind, but to regulate them.

But it's not about knowing. It is simply about going forward.

Self-love is a busy prompter.