“I’ve been worrying about God a little bit lately. It seems like he’s been in a bad mood. And I think it has to do with the quality of lovers he’s been getting.”

We cannot allow religious hooligans to place limiting points on thought.

What’s real and what’s true aren’t necessarily the same.

For every snake, there is a ladder; for every ladder, a snake.

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.

Always be nice to people. Whatever how bad they are to you. To show them you are not like them.

You have good days, you have bad days. But the main thing is to grow mentally.

I don’t want to be a bad role model.

It is better to have a bad method than to have none.

It’s contagious to do great. But once that one bad apple falls, everybody else will fall, and that’s how it is.

As bad as your situation may be, someone else always has it worse than you.

The Gospel is not about going from bad to good, it’s about going from dead to alive!

Boxing is like jazz. The better it is, the less people appreciate it.