Everybody loves 'The Wire,' and I think it's okay, but in the end it's just a police series.

The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas - uncertainty, progress, change - into crimes.

Nothing comes from nothing, Thieflet; no story comes from nowhere; new stories are born from old--it is the new combinations that make them new.

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

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

Realism can break a writer's heart.

Most of what matters in your life takes place in your absence.