Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart.

British society has never been cleansed of the filth of imperialism.

Dissensions between Muslim nations run at least as deep, if not deeper, than those nations' resentment of the West.

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.

What one writer can make in the solitude of one room is something no power can easily destroy.

There is no alternative to the peaceful coexistence of cultures.

A novel, I think, is partly about the contemporary and partly about the eternal, and it's the balance of that that's difficult to achieve.