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.

I'm not a big fan of there being voiceovers in movies. I really prefer it when the film tells it story.

The PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award is a way of spotlighting individual cases. If you look at the history of the award, the freedom rate is very high: a very high percentage of people who receive those awards are freed in the next six months to a year. The only weapon there is attention, but interestingly it works.

When you throw everything up in the air anything becomes possible.

There are things you break that can't be put back together again. And Kashmir may be one of them.

One of the reasons my name is Rushdie is that my father was an admirer of Ibn Rush'd, the 12th century Arab philosopher known as Averroes in the West. In his time, he was making the non-literalist case for interpreting the Koran.

I've met the Dalai Lama briefly, but I would probably say my grandfather was the wisest person I ever met. He was my mother's father, an Indian, a family doctor, and very unlike me in that he was deeply religious.