When 'Midnight's Children' came out, people in the West tended to respond to the fantasy elements in the novel, to praise it in those terms. In India, people read it like a history book.

There are things you break that can't be put back together again. And Kashmir may be one of them.

Rock and roll music - the music of freedom frightens people and unleashes all manner of conservative defense mechanisms.

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.

One of the extraordinary things about human events is that the unthinkable becomes thinkable.

Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.

‘Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.

In the cookie of life, friends are the chocolate chips.

Language upon a silvered tongue affords enchantment enough.

The whole story of migration and what that has done in interconnecting the planet is obviously something I've written about a lot.

faith without doubt is addiction

The worst type of man behaves as badly in his waking life as some men do in their dreams.

I know you’re just a rag doll now, sewn together with memories that we might have had. I know you’re just the dream inside of a dream And don’t worry, I know I don’t know you, anymore.

That's what I try to do as a writer and as the editor of HuffPost: cover important stories in an obsessive way that enables them to break through the din of our multimedia universe.

Congress is functioning the way the Founding Fathers intended-not very well. They understood that if you move too quickly, our democracy will be less responsible to the majority.

Forward, always forward, everywhere forward.

The most important thing in your life is to live your life with integrity and to not give in to peer pressure to try to be something that you're not.

Human anger is a higher thing than what is called divine discontent. For you must be angry with something; but you can be discontented with everything.

The record company really pissed me off when they told me to lose weight. I couldn't be bothered with looking a certain way. So I left the business. I don't regret it.

If one knows only what one is told, one does not know enough to be able to arrive at a well-balanced decision.

I've never been burdened with a hit record, so I don't have to play the same songs. I play songs people think they like.