Until you know who you are you can’t write.

In early Islam, it was an absolute tenet that the prophet was not to be worshipped. The prophet was a messenger. And one of the things that's happened in Islam is this cult of the prophet, which to my view is counter to the original tradition.

Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanation, have wrought havoc among mere mixed-up human beings.

Chekhov is this poet of melancholy and isolation and of wishing you were somewhere else than where you are.

Hell is other people's fantasies.

Science fiction is always a vehicle for ideas. It's the form which allows either movies or books to be an exploration of how we should live.

One of the reasons my name is Rushdie is that my father was an admirer of Ibn Rush'd, the 12th century Arab philosopher known as Averroes in the West. In his time, he was making the non-literalist case for interpreting the Koran.