Because I've always felt, whether the fatwa or whatever, the writer's great weapon is the truth and integrity of his voice. And as long as what you're saying is what you truly, honestly believe to be the case, then whatever the consequences, that's fine. That's an honorable position.

In the cookie of life, friends are the chocolate chips.

The writers of the French enlightenment had deliberately used blasphemy as a weapon, refusing to accept the power of the Church to set limiting points on thought.

I am gagged and imprisoned. I can't even speak. I want to kick a football in a park with my son. Ordinary, banal life: my impossible dream.

The only privilege literature deserves - and this privilege it requires in order to exist - is the privilege of being in the arena of discourse, the place where the struggle of our languages can be acted out.

We were language's magpies by nature, stealing whatever sounded bright and shiny.

Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms.