Many men start being friendly with women because they are trying to seduce them. I'm not trying to seduce them. I just like hanging out with them.

A people that has remained convinced of its greatness and invulnerability, that has chosen to believe such a myth in the face of all the evidence, is a people in the grip of a kind of sleep, or madness.

Literature is the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear voices talking about everythingin every possible way. The reason for ensuring that that privileged arena is preserved is not that writers want the absolute freedom to say and do whatever they please. It is that we, all of us, readers and writers and citizens and generals and goodmen, need that little, unimportant-looking room. We do not need to call it sacred, but we do need to remember that it is necessary.

The whole story of migration and what that has done in interconnecting the planet is obviously something I've written about a lot.

There was a series called 'Game of Thrones' which was very popular here in the United States, a post-Tolkien kind of thing. It was garbage, yet very addictive garbage - because there's lots of violence, all the women take their clothes off all the time, and it's kind of fun.

Prophet Mohammed would have no objection to The Satanic Verses.

I don't dictate to anyone what to believe and what not to. And I don't want that to be dictated to me either.