In Iran, fundamentalism was fuelled to an extent by the regime of the Shah being supported by the West.

One of the things I've thought about 'Midnight's Children' is that it is a novel which puts a Muslim family at the centre of the Indian experience.

Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.

The moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.

Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.

The way you write a screenplay is that you close your eyes and run the movie in your head and then you write it down.

I fell victim to the temptation of every autobiographer, to the illusion that since the past exists only in one's memories and the words which strive vainly to encapsulate them, it is possible to create past events simply by saying they occurred.