You don't fight radical conservatism with not-quite-so radical conservatism.

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.

Freedom is not a tea party, India. Freedom is a war.

What I've always tried to find in my books are points at which the private lives of the characters, and also my own, intersect with the public life of the culture.

The only way to find out why someone decides to engage in armed combat is to look at their individual personality.

What one writer can make in the solitude of one room is something no power can easily destroy.

Children like being a little scared, but they don't want to be disturbed.