The PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award is a way of spotlighting individual cases. If you look at the history of the award, the freedom rate is very high: a very high percentage of people who receive those awards are freed in the next six months to a year. The only weapon there is attention, but interestingly it works.

I thought, you know, I would probably not have seen that. On the other hand, he's obviously completely telling the truth. So, then what is that? That's - I wanted to explore that. And then I wanted to talk about how ideas are born. And the big question that the book asks in a number of ways about a number of things is that. How does a new idea come into the world?

An attack upon our ability to tell stories is not just censorship - it is a crime against our nature as human beings.

I think it's a very important function of art to challenge accepted reality, especially when that reality is created by powerful interest groups.

Free societies...are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best evidence of freedom's existence.

I've never read anything so badly written that got published. It made 'Twilight' look like 'War and Peace.'

My first novel - the novel I wrote before 'Midnight's Children' - feels, to me, now, very - I mean, I get embarrassed when I see people reading it. You know, there are some people who, bizarrely, like it. Which I'm, you know, I'm happy for.