One minute you've got a lucky star watching over you and the next instant it's done a bunk.

If I were asked for a one-sentence sound bite on religion, I would say I was against it.

This strange business of what it is to be a writer is this increasingly insane world in which we live, in which surrealism, it seems, is the new realism.

What I've always seen in writers and artists is the courage it takes to make an original work of art. I think the real risks in literature are linguistic and intellectual, and I hope we can highlight those, as well as political courage.

[...] the inevitable triumph of illusion over reality that was the single most obvious truth about the history of the human race [...]

Have you noticed the physical resemblance between Imran Khan and Gaddafi? If you were making a movie of the life of Gaddafi and you wanted a slightly better-looking version of Gaddafi, you might cast Imran Khan.

I think the veil is a way of taking power away from women.