One Of The Problems With

I Do Think There Was A Period There When My Sanity Was Under Intense Pressure, And I Didn't Know What To Say Or Do Or How To Act. I Was Literally Living From Day To Day.

The Question I'm Always Asking Myself Is: Are We Masters Or Victims? Do We Make History, Or Does History Make Us? Do We Shape The World, Or Are We Just Shaped By It? The Question Of Do We Have Agency In Our Lives Or Whether We Are Just Passive Victims Of Events Is, I Think, A Great Question, And One That I Have Always Tried To Ask.

In Spite Of All Evidence That Life Is Discontinuous, A Valley Of Rifts, And That Random Chance Plays A Great Part In Our Fates, We Go On Believing In The Continuity Of Things, In Causation And Meaning. But We Live On A Broken Mirror, And Fresh Cracks Appear In Its Surface Every Day.

It May Be That The Books That Were Best Liked In Your Lifetime Are Not The Ones That Are Best Liked 100 Years Later.

In Writing 'the Satanic Verses,' I Think I Was Writing For The First Time From The Whole Of Myself. The English Part, The Indian Part. The Part Of Me That Loves London, And The Part That Longs For Bombay. And At My Typewriter, Alone, I Could Indulge This.