It was luxuries like air conditioning that brought down the Roman Empire. With air conditioning their windows were shut, they couldn't hear the barbarians coming.

I was an English major at the University of Minnesota, and I was very shy, which many people misinterpreted as intelligence. On the basis of that wrong impression, I became the editor of the campus literary magazine.

I think that if writers are tempted to do other things, they ought to go do other things. They should not write if they don't feel like it. I say this as a competitor. I am not interested in encouraging people who are in competition with me.

I talk in subjects and verbs, and sort of wind around in concentric circles until I get far enough away from the beginning so that I can call it the end, and it ends.

Enchanted partnership begins with the conscious understanding, on the part of two people, that the purpose of their relationship is not so much material as spiritual, and the internal skills demanded by it are prodigious.

Marriage should be viewed as an institution ordained by God and should be out of the control of the state.

Growing up, I came to love Egypt and respect Islam, but I never thought to go beyond the surface. Back in Canada, many of my father's Egyptian friends questioned his decision not to raise his only child more strictly in the faith. I was not taught salat, the Muslim ritual of prayer, nor did I study Arabic.

I believe that there is some spiritual entity that's greater than us. I do not belong to any specific organized religion. I have always believed that, and I believe it even more so now. I believe that someone was listening to me, and someone is giving me an incredibly blessed life.