I write books I'd enjoy reading, I'm the reader standing behind my shoulder.

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

I get a lot of letters - a lot of letters saying, who knew that you were funny?

Originality is dangerous. It challenges, questions, overturns assumptions, unsettles moral codes.

If I had simply wanted to trade on an insult to Islam, I could have done it in a sentence rather than writing a 250,000-word novel, a work of fiction.

I am on Facebook, but mainly as a way to spy on my children. I find out more about them from their Facebook pages than from what they tell me.

The West should be tougher on Pakistan. It is trying to play both ends against the middle - to look like the friend of the revolutionaries on the one hand and a friend of the West in the fight against terrorism. It can't be both things.