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.

When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy.

A man who catches History's eye is thereafter bound to a mistress from whom he will never escape.

Nothing comes from nothing, Thieflet; no story comes from nowhere; new stories are born from old--it is the new combinations that make them new.

Among the great struggles of man-good/evil, reason/unreason, etc.-there is also this mighty conflict between the fantasy of Home and the fantasy of Away, the dream of roots and the mirage of the journey.

Certainly, poverty and economic decline have a lot to do with the so-called rage of Islam. You've got all these young men in countries which are economically in bad shape. The idea that they might be able to make a good living and get married and have a family, a decent life, seems very remote to a lot of people in a lot of the world.

One of the things I've thought about 'Midnight's Children' is that it is a novel which puts a Muslim family at the centre of the Indian experience.