In writing 'The Satanic Verses,' I think I was writing for the first time from the whole of myself. The English part, the Indian part. The part of me that loves London, and the part that longs for Bombay. And at my typewriter, alone, I could indulge this.

Human beings understand themselves and shape their futures by arguing and challenging and questioning and saying the un-sayable, not by bowing the knee whether to gods or to men.

Doubt, it seems to me, is the central condition of a human being in the twentieth century.

Reality is a question of perspective.

Before I came to England, my favorite authors were P. G. Wodehouse and Agatha Christie. I used to devour both.

The Republicans were not always insane. They might've had politics I didn't agree with, but they weren't always actually certifiable.

People don't like being around despair. Our tolerance for the truly hopeless, for those who are irredeemably broken by life is strictly limited. The sob stories we like are the ones that end before we're bored.