“The ultimate decision [of wearing hijab] must be that of the individual. Western opinions on the hijab or burkas are rather irrelevant. We don't get to decide for Muslim women what does or does not...”

“I often tell my students that fiction is about desire in one way or another. The older I get, the more I understand that life is generally the pursuit of desires. We want and want and oh how we wan...”

“We dont necessarily know how to hear stories about any kind of violence, because it is hard to accept that violence is as simple as it is complicated, that you can love someone who hurts you, that ...”

“Racism doesnt care about respectability, wealth, education, or status”

“I dont put that pressure on myself (to write every day), but I do tend to write every day. Its not pressureits pressure release.”

“I love, but I am not entirely sure how to be loved: how to be seen and known for the utterly flawed woman I am. It demands surrender. It demands acknowledging that I am not perfect, but perhaps I d...”

“Love has reasons which reason cannot understand.”

“Without form, communication stops... without form, you have everybody burbling on to themselves, whenever and however, things that no one else can understand and - rightly - no one else is interest...”

“A piazza is not a plaza. The plaza is the theme park of the piazza the plaza is the commercial version. A piazza is an empty space with no function. This is what Europeans understand. ”

“Blood is one of the things that made fights cool. Like, you knew it had gotten serious. I understand why we don't do it anymore.”

“If it doesn't matter who wins or loses, then why do they keep score?”

“Why is it that I notice so many brilliant scientists using Macs for their personal computers why does the Lawrence Livermore & Berkeley Labs buy millions of dollars worth of Macs? ”

“The misery in war-torn Afghanistan is reminiscent of images from the Thirty Years' War.”

“When I was five years old, I auditioned for the role of 'Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol.'”

“Yeah, I spent my teen years in West Virginia, and when I was a kid, in Louisiana. I definitely have that exposure to two different sorts of rural: the South and Appalachia.”