Oriana Fallaci

The most humiliating thing a woman can be is a coquette.

Alas, nothing reveals man the way war does. Nothing so accentuates in him the beauty and ugliness, the intelligence and foolishness, the brutishness and humanity, the courage and cowardice, the enigma.

You cannot survive if you do not know the past.

America's vulnerability comes precisely from its strength, its wealth, its power and its modernity. It's the usual story of the dog chasing its own tail.

What are the symbols of American strength, wealth, power and modernity? Certainly not jazz and rock and roll, not chewing-gum or hamburgers, Broadway or Hollywood. It's their skyscrapers. Their Pentagon. Their science. Their technology.

The more democratic and open a society is, the more it's exposed to terrorism. The more a country is free, not governed by a police regime, the more it risks hijackings or massacres like the ones that took place for many years in Italy and Germany and other parts of Europe.

I am known for a life spent in the struggle for freedom, and freedom includes the freedom of religion.

The increased presence of Muslims in Italy and in Europe is directly proportional to our loss of freedom.

I know I am a writer; it is the only thing I am sure of.

It must be terribly lonely to be a king instead of a man.

I no longer have the energy to get really angry, like I used to.

Without Khomeini, we would not be where we are. What a pity that, when pregnant with him, his mother did not choose to have an abortion.