And So It Is They

I Do Not Read The Works Of Salman Rushdie, I Write Them. By The Time I Have Finished Writing Them All I Can Think Of Is Never Reading Them Again. It's So Deep, Your Involvement With A Book, That Once It's Finished, Then You Are Really Done With It.

I Have Had Many More Close Women Friends Than Men, And I've Always Assumed That Comes From The Fact That In My Family There Was Such A Disproportionate Female Element.

Islam Doesn't Have To Mean Blind Faith. It Can Mean What It Always Meant In Your Family, A Culture, A Civilization, As Open-minded As Your Grandfather Was, As Delightedly Disputatious As Your Father Was.... Don't Let The Zealots Make Muslim A Terrifying Word, I Urged Myself; Remember When It Meant Family.

A Book Is A Product Of A Pact With The Devil That Inverts The Faustian Contract, He'd Told Allie. Dr Faustus Sacrificed Eternity In Return For Two Dozen Years Of Power; The Writer Agrees To The Ruination Of His Life, And Gains (but Only If He's Lucky) Maybe Not Eternity, But Posterity, At Least. Either Way (this Was Jumpy's Point) It's The Devil Who Wins.

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.