Why obliterate the exceptional merely in order to make the outstanding look finer than it was?

England in a way is lucky. It's an island, so the frontiers are given by the sea.

What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry.

There are things you break that can't be put back together again. And Kashmir may be one of them.

I've never yet managed to write a novel which didn't have an Indian central character.

Even when things are at their worst, there's a little voice in your head saying, 'Good story!'

One of the reasons my name is Rushdie is that my father was an admirer of Ibn Rush'd, the 12th century Arab philosopher known as Averroes in the West. In his time, he was making the non-literalist case for interpreting the Koran.