Salman Rushdie Quotes

The fact of being alive compensated for what life did to one.

I grew up in a family in which there was very little religion. My father wasn't religious at all. But he was really interested in the subject of, you know, the birth and growth of Islam. And he basically transmitted that interest to me.

One of the extraordinary things about human events is that the unthinkable becomes thinkable.

It may be argued that the past is a country from which we have all emigrated, that its loss is part of our common humanity.

Fundamentalism isn't about religion, it's about power.

You can't have modern states based on ideas which have been out of date for a thousand years.

Reading is a very different thing than performing. In fact, one of the things I think that doesn't work in books on tape is if the person doing the reading "acts" too much; it becomes irritating to you listening to it.

[...] the inevitable triumph of illusion over reality that was the single most obvious truth about the history of the human race [...]

Raif Badawi's is an important voice for all of us to hear.

Too many people spouting too many words, and in the end those words will turn to bullets and stones.

The history of life was not the bumbling progress - the very English, middle-class progress - Victorian thought had wanted it to be, but violent, a thing of dramatic, cumulative transformations: in the old formulation, more revolution than evolution.

The only thing worse than a bad review from the Ayatollah Khomeini would be a good review from the Ayatollah Khomeini.

The glamour of being forbidden must not be underestimated.

Most of what matters in your life takes place in your absence.

Happy endings must come at the end of something,' the Walrus pointed out. 'If they happen in the middle of a story, or an adventure, or the like, all they do is cheer things up for awhile.

Abraham Zogoiby covered his face that night in August 1939 because he had been assailed by fear, [...] a sudden apprehension that the ugliness of life might defeat its beauty; that love did not make lovers invulnerable. Nevertheless, he thought, even if the world's beauty and love were on the edge of destruction, theirs would still be the only side to be on; defeated love would still be love, hate's victory would not make it other than it was.

It seems to me it's perfectly possible to vehemently disagree with a piece of work and to say that it's offensive and insulting and so on and so on. And you're absolutely entitled to do that and to speak back, if you like, against that piece of speech with all the vehemence at your disposal. I mean, that's legitimate. Even other things. People have a right to demonstrate.

It doesn't matter whether characters are real people or not; if they're not vivid on the page, then the reader doesn't care about them that much, and, if the reader doesn't care about them that much, then they don't care what happens to them.

Khattam-Shud,' he said slowly, 'is the Arch-Enemy of all Stories, even of language itself. He is the Prince of Silence and the Foe of Speech. And because everything ends, because dreams end, stories end, life ends, at the finish of everything we use his name. "It's finished," we tell one another, "it's over. Khattam-Shud: The End.

Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.

There was a series called 'Game of Thrones' which was very popular here in the United States, a post-Tolkien kind of thing. It was garbage, yet very addictive garbage - because there's lots of violence, all the women take their clothes off all the time, and it's kind of fun.

Writers have an opinion about the world and offer arguments about the world. They should offer contemplation.

faith without doubt is addiction

The whole story of migration and what that has done in interconnecting the planet is obviously something I've written about a lot.

What I worry about and don't like is the way in which the ideology of multiculturalism has declined into cultural relativism. I think that's very dangerous. When the Archbishop of Canterbury, for God's sake, says that you can't have one law for everybody... that's stupid.

I had become a kind of information magpie, gathering to myself all manner of shiny scraps of fact and hokum and books and art-history and politics and music and film, and developing, too, a certain skill in manipulating and arranging these pitiful shards so that they glittered and caught the light. Fool's gold, or priceless nuggets mined from my singular childhood's rich bohemian seam? I leave it to others to decide.

This is going to make me sound ancient, but I remember Juhu Beach when there weren't any buildings on it. You'd go through countryside and arrive at this amazing beach. I remember driving from Delhi to the Qutab Minar through countryside. Mehrauli was a little village - that's all gone.

Too many people had spent too long demonizing or totemizing me to listen seriously to what I had to say.

Don't you know girls have to fool people every day of their lives if they want to get anywhere?

Doubt, it seems to me, is the central condition of a human being in the twentieth century.

Islam is unusual in that it's the only one of the great world religions which was born inside recorded history. That there's an enormous amount of factual historical record about the life of a prophet and about social conditions in Arabia at that time. So it's possible to look at the origin of Islam in a scholarly way.

To be born again,' sang Gibreal Farishta tumbling from the heaveans, 'first you have to die. Ho ji! Ho ji! To land upon the bosomy earth, first one needs to fly Tat-taa! Takatun! How to ever smile again, if first you won't cry? How to win the darling's love mister, without a sigh?

I don't like books that play to the gallery, but I've become more concerned with telling a story as clearly and engagingly as I can.

The acceptance that all that is solid has melted into the air, that reality and morality are not givens but imperfect human constructs, is the point from which fiction begins.

I'm not saying I am never going to fall in love again, but there is no need to marry.

I'm a novelist. Fortunately I don't have to rule the world.

Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts.

I have no problem with people's religious beliefs. I just don't happen to have any.

An attack upon our ability to tell stories is not just censorship - it is a crime against our nature as human beings.

Certainly, the Hollywood cinema, there's almost nothing of interest coming out of there.

It is often said by religious people that without its framework, there is no sense of right or wrong. My view is that religion comes after ethics.

It's difficult not to color our perception of author's product with his personality. There are so many examples of this. What do we think of Ezra Pound - clearly a great poet and clearly kind of an asshole? You can say the same thing about Louis-Ferdinand Céline, who clearly was a Nazi sympathizer, and yet one of the great writers of the 20th century. It is tough, but there are enough examples around where we have to somehow find a way of separating the work from the artist and seeing what there is to see in the work, while also condemning the thoughts we see in the man.

Actually, I don't even like parties. I would much prefer a room with four friends who sit around and have dinner. I detest nightclubs. And I don't like places where the noise is so loud you can't talk to people.

People are always telling me that they've seen people reading my books on the subway, or the beach, or whenever.

Before I came to England, my favorite authors were P. G. Wodehouse and Agatha Christie. I used to devour both.

Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.

To see things plainly, you have to cross a frontier.

When you are making an independent film, money is never an issue.