Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Why speak if you can't manage perfect thoughts, perfect sentences?
Fundamentalists of all faiths are the fundamental evil of our time.
If you have children you worry about the world you're leaving them.
British society has never been cleansed of the filth of imperialism.
It just requires so much of you, and most of the time you feel dumb.
Killing people because you don't like their ideas - it's a bad thing.
The world, somebody wrote, is the place we prove real by dying in it.
When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy.
Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts.
Everything has shape, if you look for it. There is no escape from form.
Sometimes when you finish a book, you don't know quite what you've got.
Free societies are societies in motion, and with motion comes friction.
The Chinese are good at repression and can be pretty ruthless about it.
She saw him fracture into rainbow colors through the prism of her love.
The history of a culture can be determined by its untranslatable words.
A mature society understands that at the heart of democracy is argument.
You never know the answers to the questions of life until you are asked.
I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire.
We cannot allow religious hooligans to place limiting points on thought.
Children like being a little scared, but they don't want to be disturbed.
I accept there are people out there who don't like me. I don't like them.
O the shame of it, the humiliating shame of being condescended to by dolts
If somebody's trying to shut you up, sing louder, and if possible, better.
I'd wanted to create a storm so that I could become more famous and richer.
Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.
Vertigo is the conflict between the fear of falling and the desire to fall.
When people do the cowardly thing, it's not about respect, it's about fear.
When we stop believing in the gods we can start believing in their stories.
If you're going to write a memoir, try to be as honest and open as you can.
I've never rejected the world I came from. To be rejected by it is horrible.
When you write, you write out of your best self. Everything else drops away.
You don't fight radical conservatism with not-quite-so radical conservatism.
It's obvious that I come down on the side of free speech for anybody's work.
I write books I'd enjoy reading, I'm the reader standing behind my shoulder.
We are the only animals that tell stories to understand the world we live in.
It is very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it.
I for one don't need a supreme "sacred" arbiter in order to be a moral being.
After a long, hopeless war, people will settle for peace, at almost any price.
There is no such thing as perfect security, only varying levels of insecurity.
A figure of speech is a shifty thing; it can be twisted or it can be straight.
I get a lot of letters - a lot of letters saying, who knew that you were funny?
I know who I am, I know what I'm for, and I know what I'm willing to fight for.
The problem of telling contemporary history is that your message gets outdated.
For a fellow who's not to much to look at, you have the instincts of a champion.
Nobody wants to read a 600 page book in which the author is fabulous throughout.
Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.
When you have children, your perspective on the parent-child relationship alters.
Acting was always my unscratched itch, when I was in college and even afterwards.
Believe in your own eyes and you'll get into a lot of trouble, hot water, a mess.
What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.