"…I have to be in this frame of mind where I’m feeling pity for myself, and feeling pity for the world. Once I’ve attained the summit of this, then I have to sit down and write…"

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“…When I recall the war, I recall it in images, not verbally or by text. That’s what really comes to me: fragmented images, much like photographs…”

“…The responsibility, the burden, is much heavier for us. If we don’t exercise our collective imagination—and not just documentation —we’ll always be at a certain disadvantage. I think what literature could provide us with is showing other possibilities. What I fear most is homogeneity.”

“…I suspect that I can attribute my style to Arabic poetry…I permit myself to be overtly poetical in my writing. Maybe because I grew up in a culture that values poetry more than anything…But having said that, not all the writing is lyrical. It fluctuates to social realism sometimes, to different influences.”

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"I see myself as a novelist, period. I mean, the material I work with is what is classified as science fiction and fantasy, and I really don't think about these things when I'm writing. I'm just thinki…"

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Literature1937–1995

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"I would say that it is a fearful doctrine, which must recoil upon the heads of those who pronounce it, to stand in judgment on a fellow human-being and to say, "Because he was such-and-such, therefore…"

— Enoch Powell

Politics1912–1998

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"Freud never abandoned his views because they were correct in their elemental suggestiveness about the human condition—but not quite in the sense that he thought, or rather, not in the framework which …"

— Ernest Becker

Literature1924–1974

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"This swaggering behavior has confounded historians, prompting them to wonder if Columbanus was a little off his rocker. But I think we may chalk up this attitude to his Irishness."

— Thomas Cahill

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