Never mind that the story had turned out to be lies and foolishness—there was always folks stupid enough to say, Where there's smoke there's fire, when the saying should have been, Where there's scandalous lies there's always malicious believers and spreaders-around, regardless of evidence.

All the stories are fictions. What matters is which fiction you believe.

It's what I was born for, isn't it? If I don't go, why am I alive?

I always tell the truth about what I’m selling, and then nobody buys it.

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them.

Withholding a decision is a decision.

Satanic Verses is a despicable book that could not have been written by a person who wished to behave decently and responsibly.