Dissensions between Muslim nations run at least as deep, if not deeper, than those nations' resentment of the West.

We must conclude that it is not only a particular political ideology that has failed, but the idea that men and women could ever define themselves in terms that exclude their spiritual needs.

Free speech is not just free speech for people you admire. It's also for people who you think of as reprehensible.

What had been (at the beginning) no bigger than a full stop had expanded into a comma, a word, a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter; now it was bursting into more complex developments, becoming, one might say, a book - perhaps an encylopaedia - even a whole language.

There are two things in Indian history - one is the incredible optimism and potential of the place, and the other is the betrayal of that potential - for example, corruption. Those two strands intertwine through the whole of Indian history, and maybe not just Indian history.

Your blasphemy, Salman, can't be forgiven. To set your words against the Words of God.

When I am writing novels I don't read a lot of novels so I try to catch up in-between.