'That's the right answer.' And he said, 'If there's anything you would like to ask me about my writing, I would be happy to reply.' I think the little bastard might well be a writer! |
[He was also] the most tolerant, open-minded, intellectually generous, nonjudgmental adult that I ever met as a child, ... the spirit of my grandfather came to infuse the spirit of the place. |
A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return. |
A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep. |
After the eastern tsunami and the western hurricanes, this is not incomprehensible. But the people of Kashmir deserve better than they are getting. |
Always do something impossible right at the beginning of the show?. Swallow a sword, tie yourself in a knot, defy gravity. Do what the audience knows it could never do no matter how hard it tries. After that you'll have them eating out of your hand. |
And now, as if to finish things off, the Himalayan winter is setting in, and the greatest calamity of all may lie ahead of us, not behind, |
And now, as if to finish things off, the Himalayan winter is setting in, and the greatest calamity of all may lie ahead of us, not behind. |
antediluvian, who think of homosexuality as ungodly, who have little time for real freedom of expression, who routinely express anti-Semitic views, and who, in the case of the Muslim Diaspora, are -- it has to be said -- in many ways at odds with the cultures among which they live. |
Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours. |
became a way of life. |
Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one. |
Both are responsible. But I know when I write a book it's my name on the book, so I stand or fall by what I sign. And so must she. |
For the record, there is a French project to make a theatrical adaptation of The Satanic Verses, so maybe that's a start. |
Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself. |