Rushdie Is A Hostage.

To Plot Is To Live. […] We Start Out Lives In Chaos, In Babble. As We Surge Up Into The World, We Try To Devise A Shape, A Plan. There Is Dignity In This. Your Whole Life Is A Plot, A Scheme, A Diagram. It Is A Failed Scheme But That's Not The Point. To Plot Is To Affirm Life, To Seek Shape And Control. Even After Death, Most Particularly After Death, The Search Continues. Burial Rites Are An Attempt To Complete The Scheme, In Ritual. Picture A State Funeral, Jack. It Is All Precision, Detail, Order, Design. The Nation Holds Its Breath. - (wn 292)

I've Never Made An Outline For Any Novel That I've Written. Never.

Be Willing To Die For Your Beliefs, Or Computer Printouts Of Your Beliefs.

It Was Only After Two Years' Work That It Occurred To Me That I Was A Writer. I Had No Particular Expectation That The Novel Would Ever Be Published, Because It Was Sort Of A Mess. It Was Only When I Found Myself Writing Things I Didn't Realise I Knew That I Said, 'i'm A Writer Now.' The Novel Had Become An Incentive To Deeper Thinking. That's Really What Writing Is—an Intense Form Of Thought.

True Terror Is A Language And A Vision. There Is A Deep Narrative Structure To Terrorist Acts, And They Infiltrate And Alter Consciousness In Ways That Writers Used To Aspire To.