Salman Rushdie: I will not die like Hitchens and Havel

"A few [people] responded to Hitchens' [and] Havel's deaths by telling me that I, too, will die soon. Sorry, folks, but my plan is to live forever."

-- Salman Rushdie, the author and novelist, in a message to his Twitter followers after the deaths of fellow writers Christopher Hitchens and Václav Havel. Hitchens died Thursday; Havel died Sunday.

"And now Havel," Rushdie, most famous for "The Satanic Verses," his controversial 1988 novel, wrote on Twitter earlier Sunday. "Damn. I'm getting tired of finding friends and comrades in the obituary columns. Will everyone please stay alive for a while?"

Other popular Yahoo! News stories:
• Christopher Hitchens, writer and Vanity Fair contributor, dies at 62
• Playboy releases Lindsay Lohan issue from custody a week early
• Piers Morgan to testify in phone-hacking case next week