Salman Rushdie

A relationship with an imaginary woman is preferable to a relationship with a real one.

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

I'm not saying I am never going to fall in love again, but there is no need to marry.

I had a very difficult relationship with my father, which ended up okay, but there were many difficult years.

A purpose of our lives is to broaden what we can understand and say and therefore be.

I have always thought, the secret purpose of the book tour is to make the writer hate the book he's written. And, as a result, drive him to write another book.

When you start writing about the stuff that is the central experience of your own life, you can talk about whatever you want, in whatever way you want.

Certainly, poverty and economic decline have a lot to do with the so-called rage of Islam. You've got all these young men in countries which are economically in bad shape. The idea that they might be able to make a good living and get married and have a family, a decent life, seems very remote to a lot of people in a lot of the world.

One of the things I do take some pride in is that if you had never read an article about my life, if you knew nothing about me, except that my books were being set in front of you to read, and if you were to read those books in sequence, I don't think you would say to yourself, 'Oh my God, something terrible happened to this writer in 1989.'

What I've always tried to find in my books are points at which the private lives of the characters, and also my own, intersect with the public life of the culture.

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

The difference between memoir and autobiography, as far as I see it, is that a memoir is there primarily to tell one particular story, whereas an autobiography tries to be a full account of a life.