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I'm telling you, you can't compare Saudi Arabia to other countries.

Saudi Arabia is a frightened monarchy. It's beset by Sunni extremists from the Islamic State and Shiite extremists backed by Iran.

Most dramatically, and perhaps least noticed, is the violence inside Saudi Arabia itself.

Saudi Arabia has also changed. People today are connecting with each other all across the world through small gadgets and television. It's a different society.

You know, Saudi Arabia has a lot of poverty also. Regardless about what you hear about the viceroy and people being rich, et cetera.

I would like to find a way in which people in Saudi Arabia could learn that they can be something other than a Muslim. Some people may not realize this. Of course, there is the problem that you can get in trouble or get stoned.

The rise to prominence of the Saudi novel in Arabic is the great man-bites-dog of recent world literature. Saudi Arabia is a country without a free press, where European styles and forms are distrusted and where the female half of the population became literate only in this generation.

The notion that a contemporary woman must look mannish in order to be taken seriously as a seeker of power is frankly dismaying. This is America, not Saudi Arabia.

It doesn't have to be a mountain you have to be climbing. I hope to change people's opinion about Saudi in general and Saudi women and Saudi women's opinion about themselves. I really hope they can step out of their comfort zone and just dream: try to push your limits.

Saudi Arabia was, until just a few years ago, probably one of the most safe countries on earth. And now the paper is daily full of activities and shootouts between Islamists who supported Osama bin Laden and the government there.