“Reality is not easy, but all this make-believe doesn’t make it easier.”

We must reclaim and retake feminism from our fellow idiotic women.

I’d like Muslims to look at their religion as a set of beliefs that they can appraise critically and pick and choose from.

I don’t have much in me left for Somalia, because the country is so broken, it’s not realistic to daydream about it.

European children are educated in a narrative of human tolerance every day, and if you want to be sure to prevent a backlash, you should at least think of bringing Muslim children and teenagers into the fold of that narrative of tolerance.

I do not believe in God, angels and the hereafter.

I was a Muslim once, remember, and it was when I was most devout that I was most full of hate.

The idea that if people are just friendly and demonstrate they want peace, that will be answered with good will – that is really naive.

We have to start with the little babies who are born now, socialize them in freedom and critical thinking. We don’t have to throw away their faith. People confuse the two, thinking if you are enlightened that means apostasy. It doesn’t.

The West is duly terrified. But it should not be surprised.

The demand that Islam makes of women is to not attract attention to yourself, and if you are in a secular society, that attire does exactly that, and it is a political symbol, no longer religious.

The more we oblige, the more we self-censor, the more we appease, the bolder the enemy gets.

There are some mosques with facilities for women; it’s usually a back room with a back-door entrance.

I love life more than I love death.

What we are now doing with the victory, and I agree with you if you condemn that and I condemn whole-heartedly the trivial bullshit it is to go after a man who makes a scientific breakthrough and all that we as women — organized women — do is to fret about his shirt?

In 2010, I suggested that if you are a good Muslim with a good conscience, go and look for a better God, and I think that was juvenile of me.

What I find daunting always is to stand on a stage and talk to people, whether they agree with me or not.

There are two ways of talking. One is the easy way, where you talk lightly, and the other one is the considered way. The considered way is what I have put my name to.

What one writer can make in the solitude of one room is something no power can easily destroy.

A statesman is an easy man, he tells his lies by rote. A journalist invents his lies, and rams them down your throat. So stay at home and drink your beer and let the neighbors vote.

It is comparatively easy to leave a mistress, but very hard to be left by one.

It is very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it.

Nowhere else than upon the sea do the days, weeks, and months fall away quicker into the past. They seem to be left astern as easily as the light air-bubbles in the swirls of the ship’s wake.

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Hint at the existence of wickedness in a light, easy, and agreeable manner, so that nobody’s fine feelings may be offended.