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Salman Rushdie Quotes - Page 11

All Quotes Age Arguing Art Atheism Atheist Belief Betrayal Birth Blasphemy Censorship Challenges Character Childhood Children Choices Christianity Conflict Country Crime Criticism Culture Desire Destiny Doubt Evil Falling In Love Fate Feelings Fighting Film Free Speech Freedom Freedom Of Speech Fun Giving Growing Up Growth Hate Heart Hell History Home Honesty Human Nature Identity Imagination Islam Journey Language Liberty Life Literature Loss Love Lying Magic Memories Mountain Optimism Past Perception Perspective Pride Prophet Reading Reality Religion Revolution Running Safety Satire School Shame Silence Son Soul Speed Storytelling Struggle Study Terrorism Tolerance Values Victory Violence War Water Worry Writing

In this world without quiet corners, there can be no easy escapes from history, from hullabaloo, from terrible, unquiet fuss.

In this world without quiet corners, there can be no easy escapes from history, from hullabaloo, from terrible, unquiet fuss.

History, World, Quiet

Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms.

Real, Modern, Form

"Salman Rushdie: ‘I Stand With Charlie Hebdo, as We All Must’". blogs.wsj.com. January 07, 2015.

In early Islam, it was an absolute tenet that the prophet was not to be worshipped. The prophet was a messenger. And one of the things that's happened in Islam is this cult of the prophet, which to my view is counter to the original tradition.

Views, Islam, Messengers

Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I’ve gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each "I", every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you’ll have to swallow the world.

Gone, Answers, World

"Midnight's Children". Book by Salman Rushdie, 1981.

You can adhere to your faith, but that faith needs to march in line with the rest of the world and needs to find a way of expressing itself in the modern world.

Lines, Way, Needs

Interview with Max Miller, bigthink.com. November 12, 2010.

There are two things in Indian history - one is the incredible optimism and potential of the place, and the other is the betrayal of that potential - for example, corruption. Those two strands intertwine through the whole of Indian history, and maybe not just Indian history.

Betrayal, Two, Optimism

Human beings understand themselves and shape their futures by arguing and challenging and questioning and saying the un-sayable, not by bowing the knee whether to gods or to men.

Men, Challenges, Shapes

Salman Rushdie (1990). “In good faith”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

Names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like so many of the earth's marvels, beneath the dust of habit.

Dust, Names, Sound

Salman Rushdie (1989). “The Satanic Verses”, New York, N.Y. : Viking

One of the strange things about violent and authoritarian regimes is they don't like the glare of negative publicity. If you can make them sufficiently uncomfortable, they frequently respond by doing what you need them to do in the spirit of setting people free or ceasing arrests, which has worked time and time again with PEN.

People, Negative, Spirit

Source: pen.org

Everest silences you...when you come down, nothing seems worth saying, nothing at all. You find the nothingness wrapping you up, like a sound. Non-being. You can't keep it up, of course. the world rushes in soon enough. What shuts you up is, I think, the sight you've had of perfection: why speak if you can't manage perfect thoughts, perfect sentences? It feels like a betrayal of what you've been through. But it fades; you accept that certain compromises, closures, are required if you're to continue.

Betrayal, Thinking, Sight

The desire for story is very, very deep in human beings. We are the only creature in the world that does this; we are the only creature that tells stories, and sometimes those are true stories and sometimes those are made up stories. Then there are the larger stories, the grand narratives that we live in, which are things like nation and family and clan and so on. Those stories are considered to be treated reverentially. They need to be part of the way in which we conduct the discourse of our lives and to prevent people from doing something very damaging to human nature.

People, Desire, World

Source: pen.org

The USA approach looks like bullying because it is.

Bullying, Usa, Iraq

Having been borne across the world, we are translated men. It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation; I cling, obstinately, to the notion that something can also be gained.

Men, World, Lost

Salman Rushdie (2017). “Home: Vintage Minis”, p.32, Random House

I do think that there is such a thing as human nature, and that the things that we have in common are perhaps greater than the things that divide us.

Thinking, Common, Human Nature

I used to say, 'There is a God-shaped hole in me.' For a long time I stressed the absence, the hole. Now I find it is the shape which has become more important.

God, Long, Stressed

Our human tragedy is that we are unable to comprehend our experience, it slips through our fingers, we can't hold on to it, and the more time passes, the harder it gets...My father said that the natural world gave us explanations to compensate for the meanings we could not grasp. The slant of the cold sunlight on a winter pine, the music of water, an oar cutting the lake and the flight of birds, the mountains' nobility , the silence of the silence. We are given life but must accept that it is unattainable and rejoice in what can be held in the eye, the memory, the mind.

Memories, Father, Eye

Unfortunately, the problem of the free speech argument is that you have to defend people you can't stand.

People, Speech, Argument

Source: www.teachingbooks.net

Nothing comes from nothing, Thieflet; no story comes from nowhere; new stories are born from old--it is the new combinations that make them new.

Stories, Born, Combination

Salman Rushdie (1990). “Haroun and the Sea of Stories”, Penguin Books

You never know the answers to the questions of life until you are asked.

Answers, Knows

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

Reality, Race, Triumph

"Shalimar the Clown". Book by Salman Rushdie, books.google.ru. October 23, 2008.

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

Beach, Book, Reading

It's fun to read things when you don't know all the words. Even children love it... they come up against weird words, and the weird words excite them.

Children, Fun, Come Up

"When life becomes a bad novel". Salon interview, 1996.

Can one drown in one's element... If fish can drown in water, can human beings suffocate in air?

Air, Water, Elements

Salman Rushdie (1989). “The Satanic Verses”, New York, N.Y. : Viking

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

Events, Extraordinary Things, Unthinkable

Salman Rushdie, Michael Reder (2000). “Conversations with Salman Rushdie”, p.10, Univ. Press of Mississippi

The frustrating part of being tagged 'controversial' is people go looking for trouble where there isn't any to look for.

People, Looks, Trouble

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