“Something was badly amiss with the spiritual life of the planet… Too many demons inside people claiming to believe in God.”

Address at Columbia University (1991)
Context: Too many people had spent too long demonizing or totemizing me to listen seriously to what I had to say. In the West, some "friends" turned against me, calling me by yet another set of insulting names. Now I was spineless, pathetic, debased; I had betrayed myself, my Cause; above all, I had betrayed them.
I also found myself up against the granite, heartless certainties of Actually Existing Islam, by which I mean the political and priestly power structure that presently dominates and stifles Muslim societies. Actually Existing Islam has failed to create a free society anywhere on Earth, and it wasn't about to let me, of all people, argue in favor of one.

Source: God's Problem (2008), Ch. 1, p. 3

Source: The Number of the Beast (1980), Chapter XXXVIII : “—under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid—”, p. 371

Source: Adaptation.: The Shooting Script

Source: Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

Surefish interview (2002)
Context: I'm caught between the words 'atheistic' and 'agnostic'. I've got no evidence whatever for believing in a God. But I know that all the things I do know are very small compared with the things that I don't know. So maybe there is a God out there. All I know is that if there is, he hasn't shown himself on earth.
But going further than that, I would say that those people who claim that they do know that there is a God have found this claim of theirs the most wonderful excuse for behaving extremely badly. So belief in a God does not seem to me to result automatically in behaving very well.

Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 96
("Leela" is more commonly spelled "Lila")

As quoted in the article Wangari Maathai:"You Strike The Woman ..." http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC28/Sears.htm by Priscilla Sears; published in the quarterly In Context #28 (Spring 1991)

Source: Sliver of Truth