"A Very Good Wizard, a Very Dear Friend, a remembrance by Salman Rushdie"

“Women's sexy underwear is a minor but significant growth industry of late-twentieth-century Britain in the twilight of capitalism.”

“Throwing open the door, she brings forth the veritable queen of all the souffles, that spreads its archangelic wings over the entire kitchen as it leaps upwards from the dish in which the force of gravity alone confines it.”

“A book is simply the container of an idea—like a bottle; what is inside the book is what matters.”

“Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual.”

“My work cuts like a steel blade at the base of a man's penis.”

“Comedy is tragedy that happens to other people.”