In the end, the thing that's important about free expression is that it's the right from which all other rights are derived. If you can't articulate ideas and if you can't articulate critiques of other peoples' ideas, then you're powerless. What always increases the power of an authoritarian regime is whether it can successfully prevent people from expressing themselves.

When you start writing about the stuff that is the central experience of your own life, you can talk about whatever you want, in whatever way you want.

A figure of speech is a shifty thing; it can be twisted or it can be straight.

The act of migration puts into crisis everything about the migrating individual or group, everything about identity and selfhood and culture and belief. So if this is a novel about migration it must be that act of putting in question. It must perform the crisis it describes.

'The Satanic Verses' was denied the ordinary life of a novel. It became something smaller and uglier: an insult.

There is no such thing as perfect security, only varying levels of insecurity.

Stories in families are colossally important. Every family has stories: some funny, some proud, some embarrassing, some shameful. Knowing them is proof of belonging to the family.