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

If you want to be a serious writer, then you have to write what there is to write about. If you're going to pull your punches and second-guess yourself and not do things because you're worried, then don't write. Stay home and do something else.

Religion is responsible for a lot of the problems in the history of the world and it's not something that I practice or recommend, but to each his own.

Sometimes people have said that Islam, in its own calendar, is still only in the Middle Ages.

Sometimes great, banned works defy the censor's description and impose themselves on the world - 'Ulysses,' 'Lolita,' the 'Arabian Nights.'

One of the extraordinary things about human events is that the unthinkable becomes thinkable.

So when I studied history at Cambridge, I did a special subject in that, exactly that. And then actually that - while I was studying it was where I came across the so-called incident of the satanic verses.