Literature is the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear voices talking about everything in every possible way.

Rushdie frames literature as a uniquely private public square: a space where readers can encounter a plurality of voices—conflicting, taboo, intimate, or politically dangerous—without external surveillance. The “secrecy of our own heads” emphasizes reading as an interior act that can preserve freedom of thought even when speech is constrained. The claim also defends the novel’s polyphony: fiction can stage many perspectives “about everything,” resisting single, authorized narratives. In Rushdie’s broader career—marked by debates over censorship, blasphemy, and the risks of expression—the line functions as an argument for literature’s civic value: it enlarges empathy and imagination by letting us inhabit other minds, and it protects dissent by making that encounter inward and hard to police.