When we stop believing in gods we can start believing in their stories, I retort. There are of course no such things as miracles, but if there were and so tomorrow we woke up to find no more believers on earth, no more devout Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, why then, sure the beauty of the stories would be a thing we could focus on because they wouldn't be dangerous any more, they would become capable of compelling the only belief that leads to truth, that is, the willing, disbelieving of the reader in a well-told tale.

We are the only animals that tell stories to understand the world we live in.

What you were is forever who you are.

The real risks for any artist are taken in pushing the work to the limits of what is possible, in the attempt to increase the sum of what it is possible to think. Books become good when they go to this edge and risk falling over it -when they endanger the artist by reason of what he has, or has not, artistically dared.

'The Satanic Verses' was denied the ordinary life of a novel. It became something smaller and uglier: an insult.

England in a way is lucky. It's an island, so the frontiers are given by the sea.

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