I remember when I was young, many cities in the Muslim world were cosmopolitan cities with a lot of culture.

We have come to think of taking offence as a fundamental right. We value very little more highly than our rage, which gives us, in our opinion, the moral high ground. From there we can shoot down at our enemies and inflict heavy fatalities.

When 'Midnight's Children' came out, people in the West tended to respond to the fantasy elements in the novel, to praise it in those terms. In India, people read it like a history book.

Our lives teach us who we are.

I'm a novelist. Fortunately I don't have to rule the world.

Killing people because you don't like their ideas - it's a bad thing.

The only position when violence is threatened in response to a novel or a cartoon or a crappy YouTube video is a no-surrender position. This is how we live. We live in a country in which we have these rights, and we're not going to give them up. Full stop. The end.