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.

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.

I discovered that if you find the language to talk to younger readers, children can accept anything.

The response of anybody interested in liberty is that we all have a say and the ability to have an argument is exactly what liberty is, even though it may never be resolved. In any authoritarian society the possessor of power dictates, and if you try and step outside he will come after you.

If Woody Allen were a Muslim, he'd be dead by now.

I don't think people cry reading 'Midnight's Children,' but a lot of people seem to cry watching the movie.

So India’s problem turns out to be the world’s problem. What happened in India has happened in God’s name. The problem’s name is God.