We left Egypt when I was seven, and we didn't return until I was 21. My teen years were divided between the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia. Up until we left the U.K., it was like your regular teenage years. The one thing I remember is that I couldn't date. That was one thing my parents made very clear.

I do not subscribe to a feminism that demands perfection or super heroic nobility of women. But I do insist that putting women at the service of patriarchy is no victory for us.

Across the globe, fundamentalists of all religions are on one side, and their attitudes towards women and towards female sexuality are almost identical.

Feminism, as I see it, is not about counting women in key jobs.

Men, if you are in a position of power or authority, please respectfully continue to mentor and work with talented individuals and those with promise, regardless if they are men or women.

A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live.

E-books present the greatest opportunity readers have ever had to find each other. It's a chance for stories written for paper to find new life and a chance for new stories to appear, freed from the constraints of paper publishing.

Conception, my boy, fundamental brain work, is what makes all the difference in art.