You can find shame in every house, burning in an ashtray, hanging framed upon a wall, covering a bed. But nobody notices it any more.

I don't think it is always necessary to take up the anti-colonial -- or is it post-colonial? -- cudgels against English. What seems to me to be happening is that those people who were once colonized by the language are now rapidly remaking it, domesticating it, becoming more and more relaxed about the way they use it -- assisted by the English language's enormous flexibility and size, they are carving out large territories for themselves within its frontiers.

You start at the stupid end of the book, and if you're lucky you finish at the smart end.

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.

Well, we're still in the middle of it. And it doesn't show any sign of going away. And these attacks that were - that seemed so odd at the time, with "Satanic Verses," because we didn't have any context for this. You know, where did that come from? It seemed to come out of nowhere.

When I was growing up, everyone around me was fond of fooling around with words. It was certainly common in my family, but I think it is typical of Bombay, and maybe of India, that there is a sense of play in the way people use language.

It's a terrible thing that your life turns into a good story.