Things, even people have a way of leaking into each other like flavours when you cook.

Fundamentalists believe that we don't believe in anything. In their view of the world, they are in possession of absolute certainties, while we are descending into decadence. We will be able to triumph over terrorism not by waging war on it, but through a conscious, fearless way of life.

Originality is dangerous. It challenges, questions, overturns assumptions, unsettles moral codes.

There is a point beyond which conciliation looks like capitulation. I do not believe I passed that point, but others have thought otherwise.

So when I studied history at Cambridge, I did a special subject in that, exactly that. And then actually that - while I was studying it was where I came across the so-called incident of the satanic verses.

My grandmother was very fierce and gruff. She was quite small, but she was very wide.

If you live in free countries, you don't have to spend all your life arguing about freedom because it is all around you. It seems redundant to make a lot of noise about something when, in fact, there it is. But if someone tries to remove it, it becomes important for you to formulate your own defenses of it.