Salman Rushdie

I've never had very high regard for therapists. I owe my health, my mental survival, to my friends and loved ones.

We cannot allow religious hooligans to place limiting points on thought.

It seems that the right of freedom of speech that was enshrined in numerous constitutions is now under attack by religious institutions.

I think that a lot of us, whether we are religious or not - there are no words to express some things except religious words. For instance, 'soul.'

I've met the Dalai Lama briefly, but I would probably say my grandfather was the wisest person I ever met. He was my mother's father, an Indian, a family doctor, and very unlike me in that he was deeply religious.

All art began as sacred art, you know? I mean, all painting began as religious painting. All writing began as religious writing.

Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory.

I do think that there is such a thing as human nature, and that the things that we have in common are perhaps greater than the things that divide us.

An attack upon our ability to tell stories is not just censorship - it is a crime against our nature as human beings.

I'm not a prophet, but I always thought it was natural for dictatorships to fall. I remember in 1989, two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, had you said it was going to happen no one would have believed you. The system seemed powerful and unbreakable. Suddenly overnight it blew away like dust.

Such is the miraculous nature of the future of exiles: what is first uttered in the impotence of an overheated apartment becomes the fate of nations.

If you actually want to change your world, there is a better way of doing it than blowing yourself up.