Being An Idiot

I left college in 1968, and "Midnight's Children" was published twelve years later. In between, I was essentially floundering about. I worked in advertising two or three days a week in order to have the other four or five to stay home and write. Advertising was very tempting because they were constantly trying to bribe me to do it full-time. When you've had no success as a writer, the bribes start looking good. You start thinking, Who am I kidding? I think I want to be a novelist, but I'm not getting anywhere, and meanwhile here are these people offering me a comfortable living to do something that I actually can do. "Don't be an idiot!" a voice says. The thing that I think was very brave of my younger self was that he decided he would be an idiot. Just persevere. That feels brave to me: deciding that I'm going to damn well be this person that I've set my heart on being.

- Salman Rushdie, in Esquire Magazine's 'What I've Learned' section