Two things form the bedrock of any open society - freedom of expression and rule of law. If you don't have those things, you don't have a free country.

'The Satanic Verses' was denied the ordinary life of a novel. It became something smaller and uglier: an insult.

In a novel, if you're any good, you don't just have good people or bad people. You have complicated people. You have real people.

I only met Margaret Thatcher twice. The thing that I thought about meeting her was how extraordinarily intelligent she was. You really had to be on your game otherwise she'd make mincemeat of you.

I don't think I've ever quite grown out of it, actually. There was a point where I could recite some of those Elvish verses - which I've mercifully forgotten. But I can still, if really pushed, recite the text of the inside of the ruling ring in the language of Mordor.

A figure of speech is a shifty thing; it can be twisted or it can be straight.

Not all possibilities are open to us. The world is finite; our hopes spill over its rim.