There needs to be a thorough examination, by Muslims everywhere, of why it is that the faith they love breeds so many violent mutant strains.

I think that a lot of us, whether we are religious or not - there are no words to express some things except religious words. For instance, 'soul.'

When you're writing for the screen you're really thinking all the time of what you have to do to make sure that they have the information that they need, that the emotional thread is not snapped, that the story moves at the right speed, to keep the audience hopefully sitting on the edge of their seats or else weeping or laughing.

I grew up kissing books and bread.

It just requires so much of you, and most of the time you feel dumb.

When I was writing The Satanic Verses, if you had asked me about the phenomenon that we all now know as radical Islam, I wouldn't have had much to say. As recently as the mid-1980s, it didn't seem to be a big deal.

Two things form the bedrock of any open society - freedom of expression and rule of law. If you don't have those things, you don't have a free country.