There Is No Magic On

When I Was Writing The Satanic Verses, If You Had Asked Me About The Phenomenon That We All Now Know As Radical Islam, I Wouldn't Have Had Much To Say. As Recently As The Mid-1980s, It Didn't Seem To Be A Big Deal.

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

Sometimes When You Finish A Book, You Don't Know Quite What You've Got.

The Suicide Bomber's Imagination Leads Him To Believe In A Brilliant Act Of Heroism, When In Fact He Is Simply Blowing Himself Up Pointlessly And Taking Other People's Lives.

I've Been Fascinated By Machiavelli Since I Was Very Young. I've Always Felt That He Had A Bad Rap From History, And That He Was Actually A Person Quite Unlike What We Now Think Of As Machiavellian. He Was A Republican. He Disliked Totalitarian Government.