“Something was badly amiss with the spiritual life of the planet, Too many demons inside people claiming to believe in God.”

Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another’s, were no longer our own, individual, discrete.

One of the strange things about violent and authoritarian regimes is they don’t like the glare of negative publicity.

No, I don’t think it’s fair to label Islam ‘violent.’ But I will say that to my knowledge, no writer has ever gone into hiding for criticizing the Amish.

The only people who see the whole picture,’ he murmured, ‘are the ones who step out of the frame.

One of the things a writer is for is to say the unsayable, speak the unspeakable and ask difficult questions.

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

I don’t dictate to anyone what to believe and what not to. And I don’t want that to be dictated to me either.

Even when things are at their worst, there’s a little voice in your head saying, ‘Good story!’

If you’re offended, it’s your problem.

If somebody’s trying to shut you up, sing louder, and if possible, better.

Self-censorship is a lie to yourself; if you are going to be trying to seriously create art, to create literary art, and you decide to hold back, to censor yourself, then you are a fool to yourself and it would be better that you kept your mouth shut and did not speak.

We are the storytelling animal.

Stories in families are colossally important. Every family has stories: some funny, some proud, some embarrassing, some shameful. Knowing them is proof of belonging to the family.

Until you know who you are you can’t write.

I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire.

You can’t have modern states based on ideas which have been out of date for a thousand years.

Lots of people will protest that it’s quite unreal and that I’m out of my mind, but that’s just too bad.

If you think that American imperialism and its globalised, capitalist form is the most dangerous thing in the world, that means you don’t think the Islamic Republic of Iran or North Korea or the Taliban is as bad.

It is a tragedy that we live in a world where physical courage is so common, and moral courage is so rare.

If people don’t like me for whatever I do, for being me, then that’s too bad. I don’t want to change to be something that I’m not for other people to like me.

If we feel inwardly strong, we will have no need or desire to speak ill of others.

I wake up every morning at, like, seven or eight because I think that there’s a bad story about me, and I have to check. My worst fear is waking up and finding something bad about me on the Internet.

I always try to write a song to work things out with myself and I want to do it with a little punchline at the end, because I never want to remember anything bad in my life.

Sin doesn’t make us bad, sin makes us dead. The gospel doesn’t make us better, the gospel makes us alive.