The council now beginning rises in the Church like the daybreak, a forerunner of most splendid light.
If I were asked for a one-sentence sound bite on religion, I would say I was against it.
Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.
Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, to rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.
The only people who see the whole picture,' he murmured, 'are the ones who step out of the frame.
Perhaps the story you finish is never the one you begin.
I reluctantly concluded that there was no way for me to help bring into being the Muslim culture I'd dreamed of, the progressive, irreverent, skeptical, argumentative, playful and unafraid culture which is what I've always understood as freedom. . . . Actually Existing Islam. . . which makes literalism a weapon and redescription a crime, will never let the likes of me in.
At the core of investigative journalism is exactly the same thing that drives a page-turning thriller: telling a great story.
My whole concept in life is if you're not using it, you should give it to somebody else so they can use it.
One of the things the United States does well is building coalitions. What the U. S. knows is that if you don't have a coalition with you, you will have a coalition against you. I don't want to see China and Russia on the side of Iran more strongly than they are.
Come on up, boys -I'm dead.