Salman Rushdie

You don't that often see writers being sought out when there are matters of great moment to discuss. And I think that's a loss.

Censorship is the thing that stops you doing what you want to do, and what writers want to talk about is what they do, not what stops them doing it.

In Iran, fundamentalism was fuelled to an extent by the regime of the Shah being supported by the West.

If you're on a freeway and want to know if you're being followed, what you do is enormously vary your speed. You accelerate to 100 and slow down to 30 and then accelerate again. In a city, you make a lot of turns against the stream of traffic. You go around a roundabout twice.

Killing people because you don't like their ideas - it's a bad thing.

In today's U.S., it's possible for almost anyone - women, gays, African-Americans, Jews - to run for, and be elected to, high office.

The glamour of being forbidden must not be underestimated.

I'm not a big fan of there being voiceovers in movies. I really prefer it when the film tells it story.

I did a lot of student acting when I was young.

We all dream things into being; you imagine yourself having a child, and then you have a child. An inventor will think of something in his mind and then make it actual. So things are often passing from the imagined realm into the real world.

If you're offended, it's your problem.

Many men start being friendly with women because they are trying to seduce them. I'm not trying to seduce them. I just like hanging out with them.