Of course, there is nothing intrinsic linking any religion with any act of violence. The crusades don't prove that Christianity was violent. The Inquisition doesn't prove that Christianity tortures people. But that Christianity did torture people.

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.

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

Original thought, original artistic expression is by its very nature questioning, irreverent, iconoclastic.

Writers have been in terrible situations and have yet managed to produce extraordinary work.

Acting was always my unscratched itch, when I was in college and even afterwards.

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.