If Islam is to be reconciled with modernity, these voices must be encouraged until they swell into a roar.

I always thought the front line was the bookstores. And bookstores around America, around the world did astonishingly well. They held the line. They didn't chicken out. You know, they defended the book. They kept it in the front of the store.

I've never had very high regard for therapists. I owe my health, my mental survival, to my friends and loved ones.

My father decided that he was such a admirer of Ibn Rushd's philosophy, thinking that he changed the family name to Rushdie. I realized why my father was so interested in him, because he was really an incredibly modernizing voice inside our Islamic culture.

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

When I am writing novels I don't read a lot of novels so I try to catch up in-between.

Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.