“Every time you finish a book, you have a terrible feeling that there’s just never going to be another one. But fortunately, so far, the next one has always shown up.”

But there’s one thing we must all be clear about: terrorism is not the pursuit of legitimate goals by some sort of illegitimate means. Whatever the murderers may be trying to achieve, creating a better world certainly isn’t one of their goals. Instead they are out to murder innocent people.

My horizon’s have shrunk and I have only endings to write.

Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today.

Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.

I didn’t become a writer to write about me.

An attack upon our ability to tell stories is not just censorship – it is a crime against our nature as human beings.

The lessons one learns at school are not always the ones the school thinks it’s teaching.

I write books I’d enjoy reading, I’m the reader standing behind my shoulder.

Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.

Liberate yourself, because no one else is going to liberate you.

I have never really thought of myself as a writer about religion. And I think one of the things that happened to me as a result of all that is that I think it did for some people, many people, obscure the kind of writer that I actually am.

Between the adored and the adorer falls the shadow.

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.

In the cookie of life, friends are the chocolate chips.

From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.

Faith without doubt is addiction.

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.

It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.

Her eyes are my favorite book to read.

Words mean more than we mean to express when we use them: so a whole book ought to mean a great deal more than the writer meant.

There is no great book than the elders of the home.

Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed’ is the title of the book.

What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.