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

If you actually want to change your world, there is a better way of doing it than blowing yourself up.

I have always thought that these two ways of talking, one is the fantastic, the fable, the fairy tale, and the other being history, the scholarly study of what happened, I think they’re both amazing ways to understand human nature.

So India’s problem turns out to be the world’s problem. What happened in India has happened in God’s name. The problem’s name is God.

How do you defeat terrorism? Don’t be terrorized.

When a reader falls in love with a book, it leaves its essence inside him, like radioactive fallout in an arable field, and after that there are certain crops that will no longer grow in him, while other, stranger, more fantastic growths may occasionally be produced.

It matters, it always matters, to name rubbish as rubbish; that to do otherwise is to legitimize it.

Friendships are the family we make – not the one we inherit. I’ve always been someone to whom friendship, elective affinities, is as important as family.

Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.

Literature is the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear voices talking about everything in every possible way.

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.

The time will come when the Negro in the South will be accorded all the political rights which his ability, character, and material possessions entitle him to.

The ability to change constantly and effectively is made easier by high-level continuity.

My greatest talent is in my ability to choose good friends. It’s about as important as things get.

Intelligence is measured by a person’s ability to see validity within both sides of contradicting arguments.

As your temptations become greater, so does your ability to make responsible choices.

It is not merely enough to have the ability to be persistant, you must also have the ability to start over.

There is an appropriate way to use your story, not as an excuse but as a testimony to God’s ability to free you from the past.

Ability hits the mark where presumption overshoots and diffidence falls short.