My first novel - the novel I wrote before 'Midnight's Children' - feels, to me, now, very - I mean, I get embarrassed when I see people reading it. You know, there are some people who, bizarrely, like it. Which I'm, you know, I'm happy for.

The lessons one learns at school are not always the ones the school thinks it's teaching.

If the culture shifts, if people think differently about women, the art will shift, too. You can't ask art to make social change. It's not what it's for.

What you were is forever who you are.

If the creative artist worries if he will still be free tomorrow, then he will not be free today.

If you want to draw people into the story, you really have to write as if you're writing a novel and make these actually-existing people, including the actually-existing person with my name, into a believable person on the page. And that requires distance. That requires not being right up against the events you're talking about.

Speaking as somebody with three sisters and a very largely female Muslim family, there is not a single woman I know in my family or in their friends who would have accepted the wearing of a veil.