Bin Laden was born filthy rich and died in a rich man's house, which he had painstakingly built to the highest specifications.

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.

If I had simply wanted to trade on an insult to Islam, I could have done it in a sentence rather than writing a 250,000-word novel, a work of fiction.

If you have children you worry about the world you're leaving them.

The only privilege literature deserves - and this privilege it requires in order to exist - is the privilege of being in the arena of discourse, the place where the struggle of our languages can be acted out.

I do think that there is such a thing as human nature, and that the things that we have in common are perhaps greater than the things that divide us.

The thing I really like about Twitter is the speed with which information reaches me. You find out things from Twitter long before they're on the news. That I think is valuable. In terms of actually tweeting myself, I have just lost enthusiasm for it. Maybe I'll do some of it this week to tell people about the PEN Festival and encourage them to show up.