The Satanic Verses

"But names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like so many of the earths marvels, beneath the dust of habit."

"Why speak if you cant manage perfect thoughts, perfect sentences?"

"I am informing all brave Muslims of the world that the author of The Satanic Verses , a text written, edited, and published against Islam, the Prophet of Islam, and the Qu’ran, along with all the editors and publishers aware of its contents, are condemned to death. I call on all valiant Muslims wherever they may be in the world to kill them without delay, so that no one will dare insult the sacred beliefs of Muslims henceforth. Whoever is killed in this cause will be a martyr, God Willing. Meanwhile if someone has access to the author of the book but is incapable of carrying out the execution, he should inform the people so that [Rushdie] is punished for his actions."

"A poets work … to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep."

"Question: What is the opposite of faith?Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself a kind of belief.Doubt."

"The history of life was not the bumbling progress – the very English, middle-class progress – Victorian thought had wanted it to be, but violent, a thing of dramatic, cumulative transformations: in the old formulation, more revolution than evolution."