In early Islam, it was an absolute tenet that the prophet was not to be worshipped. The prophet was a messenger. And one of the things that's happened in Islam is this cult of the prophet, which to my view is counter to the original tradition.

If I had simply wanted to trade on an insult to Islam, I could have done it in a sentence rather than writing a 250,000-word novel, a work of fiction.

The suicide bomber's imagination leads him to believe in a brilliant act of heroism, when in fact he is simply blowing himself up pointlessly and taking other people's lives.

Sometimes you find your voice by trying to write like people, and sometimes you find it by trying to write unlike people.

What I worry about and don't like is the way in which the ideology of multiculturalism has declined into cultural relativism. I think that's very dangerous. When the Archbishop of Canterbury, for God's sake, says that you can't have one law for everybody... that's stupid.

Sometimes writing a novel is not unlike having a baby. You'd have to ask a female novelist to compare the pain.

I have to say that after some initial resistance, I'm now a complete 'Game of Thrones' addict.