The real risks for any artist are taken in pushing the work to the limits of what is possible, in the attempt to increase the sum of what it is possible to think. Books become good when they go to this edge and risk falling over it -when they endanger the artist by reason of what he has, or has not, artistically dared.

Out-of-step intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and the deceased Edward Said have often been dismissed as crazy extremists, 'anti-American,' and in Mr. Said's case even, absurdly, as apologists for Palestinian 'terrorism.'

Obviously, a rigid, blinkered, absolutist world view is the easiest to keep hold of, whereas the fluid, uncertain, metamorphic picture I've always carried about is rather more vulnerable.

[...] the inevitable triumph of illusion over reality that was the single most obvious truth about the history of the human race [...]

I admit it: above all things, I fear absurdity.

If you want to be a serious writer, then you have to write what there is to write about. If you're going to pull your punches and second-guess yourself and not do things because you're worried, then don't write. Stay home and do something else.

Rohinton Mistry's celebrated novel 'Such a Long Journey' was pulled off the syllabus of Mumbai University because local extremists objected to its content.