Human beings understand themselves and shape their futures by arguing and challenging and questioning and saying the un-sayable, not by bowing the knee whether to gods or to men.

Sometimes great, banned works defy the censor's description and impose themselves on the world - 'Ulysses,' 'Lolita,' the 'Arabian Nights.'

The thing that always attracted me to New York was the sense of being in a place where a lot of people had a lot of stories not unlike mine,' Rushdie says. 'Everybody comes from somewhere else. Everyone's got a Polish grandmother, some kind of metamorphosis in their family circumstances. That's a very big thing - the experience of not living where you started.

Sometimes I think that when people become famous, there's a public perception that they are not human beings any more. They don't have feelings; they don't get hurt; you can act and say as you like about them.

I have a general feeling that writers and artists who are in this peculiar situation, of being a persecuted artist, all anyone ever asks about is the persecution. It may well be that's the last thing in the world they want to talk about. There were many years in which every journalist in the world wanted to talk to me, but nobody wanted to talk to me about my work. That felt deeply frustrating because I felt there was an attempt to stifle me as an artist. The best revenge I could have was to write.

The publishing of a book is a worldwide event. The attempt to suppress a book is a worldwide event.

What I do think is evident is that those countries in the world where Islamic extremism has recovered the most power, those are also the countries which are most disliked.