If I Had Simply Wanted To Trade

The Koran Was Revealed At A Time Of Great Change In The Arab World, The Seventh-century Shift From A Matriarchal Nomadic Culture To An Urban Patriarchal System.

That's The Trouble With You Sad-city Types: A Place Has To Be Miserable And Dull As Ditchwater Before You Believe It's Real.

Go For Broke. Always Try And Do Too Much. Dispense With Safety Nets. Take A Deep Breath Before You Begin Talking. Aim For The Stars. Keep Grinning. Be Bloody-minded. Argue With The World. And Never Forget That Writing Is As Close As We Get To Keeping A Hold On The Thousand And One Things--childhood, Certainties, Cities, Doubts, Dreams, Instants, Phrases, Parents, Loves--that Go On Slipping , Like Sand, Through Our Fingers.

He Had Picked Up Languages The Way Most Sailors Pick Up Diseases; Languages Were His Gonorrhoea, His Syphilis, His Scurvy, His Ague, His Plague.

It Is Literature Which For Me Opened The Mysterious And Decisive Doors Of Imagination And Understanding. To See The Way Others See. To Think The Way Others Think. And Above All, To Feel.