Friendships are the family we make - not the one we inherit. I've always been someone to whom friendship, elective affinities, is as important as family.

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.

We must agree on what matters: kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches, disagreement, cutting-edge fashion, literature, generosity, water, a more equitable distribution of the world's resources, movies, music, freedom of thought, beauty, love.

It's a terrible thing that your life turns into a good story.

Self-censorship is a lie to yourself; if you are going to be trying to seriously create art, to create literary art, and you decide to hold back, to censor yourself, then you are a fool to yourself and it would be better that you kept your mouth shut and did not speak.

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

You don't fight radical conservatism with not-quite-so radical conservatism.