Don't you know girls have to fool people every day of their lives if they want to get anywhere?

Islam is unusual in that it's the only one of the great world religions which was born inside recorded history. That there's an enormous amount of factual historical record about the life of a prophet and about social conditions in Arabia at that time. So it's possible to look at the origin of Islam in a scholarly way.

I didn't become a writer to write about me.

In the end, you write the book that grabs you by the throat and demands to be written.

I was 21 in 1968, so I'm as much a child of the '60s as is possible to be. In those years the subject of religion had really almost disappeared; the idea that religion was going to be a major force in the life of our societies, in the West anyway, would have seemed absurd in 1968.

It's always been colossally important to me that my books should be well received in India. It's where I come from.

Vertigo is the conflict between the fear of falling and the desire to fall.