The whole story of migration and what that has done in interconnecting the planet is obviously something I've written about a lot.

Perhaps because my relationship with my father went through such a long, bumpy time, it's been very important for me to work to try to keep lines of communication open between my sons and myself to try to avoid my father's mistakes. At least if you're making mistakes, make different mistakes.

This was an age before e-books. We all knew that the only way you can allow a book to survive in print in the long term is in paperback. The hardback has a certain life, and then it stops having that. It stops selling, and if you want the book to just stay around there has to be a paperback edition. So if there were not a paperback edition the book would eventually disappear from the shelves, and we would have lost the battle.

Whores and writers, Mahound. We are the people you can't forgive.

There is a widespread difficulty in the Muslim world, which has to do with how the people are taught about examining their own history. A whole range of stuff has been placed off limits.

When I was writing The Satanic Verses, if you had asked me about the phenomenon that we all now know as radical Islam, I wouldn't have had much to say. As recently as the mid-1980s, it didn't seem to be a big deal.

I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire.