Once you have been in an earthquake you know, even if you survive without a scratch, that like a stroke in the heart, it remains in the earth's breas… - Salman Rushdie

Where they burn books they will in the end burn people too.

He was learning that to win a fight like this, it was not enough to know what one was fighting against. That was easy. He was fighting against the view that people could be killed for their ideas, and against the ability of any religion to place a limiting point on thought. But he needed, now, to be clear of what he was fighting for. Freedom of speech, freedom of the imagination, freedom from fear, and the beautiful, ancient art of which he was privileged to be a practitioner. Also skepticism, irreverence, doubt, satire, comedy, and unholy glee. He would never again flinch from the defense of these things. p. 285

Maybe I should go home. I miss Bombay. But the Bombay I miss isn't there to go home to anymore. This is who we are. We sail away from the place we love and then because we aren't there to love it people go with axes and burning torches and smash and burn and then we say, Oh, too sad. But we abandoned it, left it to our barbarian successors to destroy.