“they came in search of the hot stuff, just like any man calling on a tart.”

“Once the god-squaddie supreme, she was now possessed of the zeal of the apostate and came on like an atheistic stormtrooper.”

“And blessed be the first sweet suffering that I felt in being conjoined with love and the bow and the shafts with which I was pierced, and the wounds that run to the depths of my heart…” any man who loves this poem as I do, must be my master... And any man who feels as I do about these words must be my drinking companion.”

“Believe in your own eyes and you'll get into a lot of trouble, hot water, a mess.”

“We strive for heights bit our natures betray us, Chamcha thought; clowns in search of crowns. The bitterness overcame him”

“Nobody ever wanted to go to war, but if a war came your way, it might as well be the right war, about the most important things in the world, and you might as well, if you were going to fight it, be called "Rushdie," and stand where your father had placed you, in the tradition of the grand Aristotelian, Averroës, Abul Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Rushd.”

“I always thought storytelling was like juggling [...] You keep a lot of different tales in the air, and juggle them up and down, and if you're good you don't drop any.”