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Salman Rushdie Quotes - Page 15

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

Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long. It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it to, in the case of literature, its readers; to be, for a secular, materialist culture, some sort

Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long. It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it to, in the case of literature, its readers; to be, for a secular, materialist culture, some sort of replacement for what the love of god offers in the world of faith.

Love, Art, Mystical Experiences

Salman Rushdie (1990). “Is nothing sacred?”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

What you were is forever who you are.

Forever, Who You Are

If you want to draw people into the story, you really have to write as if you're writing a novel and make these actually-existing people, including the actually-existing person with my name, into a believable person on the page. And that requires distance. That requires not being right up against the events you're talking about.

Distance, Writing, Names

Source: www.teachingbooks.net

Nobody wants to read a 600 page book in which the author is fabulous throughout.

Book, Want, Pages

What I found interesting writing a screenplay as opposed to writing a novel is not the obvious thing, which is having to pare everything down and find the kind of essence, the skeleton if you like, which can then be fleshed out by performance and cinematography.

Writing, Skeletons, Essence

"Salman Rushdie brings 'Midnight's Children' to big screen". Interview with Matt Carey, www.cnn.com. May 6, 2013.

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.

Book, Reading, Thinking

"Salman Rushdie brings 'Midnight's Children' to big screen". Interview with Matt Carey, www.cnn.com. May 6, 2013.

The problem of telling contemporary history is that your message gets outdated.

Messages, Problem, Outdated

"'Everybody needs to get thicker skins'". Interview with Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com. July 10, 2008.

She saw him fracture into rainbow colors through the prism of her love.

Color, Rainbow, Saws

But I - and I just think it's very - one of the problems of defending the extraordinary principle of freedom of speech is that you have to defend freedom of speech for people like that too.

Thinking, People, Freedom Of Speech

One of the things I know from the study of history is that history surprises you. History is not written. It's not inevitable.The victory of evil is not certain.

Evil, Victory, Study

Source: www.pbs.org

As though she had entered a fable, as though she were no more than words crawling along a dry page, or as though she were becoming that page itself, that surface on which her story would be written and across which there blew a hot and merciless wind, turning her body to papyrus, her skin to parchment, her soul to paper.

Wind, Soul, Skins

It's a terrible thing that your life turns into a good story.

Stories, Terrible, Turns

Source: www.teachingbooks.net

I think the veil is a way of taking power away from women.

Thinking, Veils, Way

"Rushdie backs Straw in row over Muslim veils" by Riazat Butt, www.theguardian.com. October 11, 2006.

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.

Real, Character, People

Source: www.guernicamag.com

I for one don't need a supreme "sacred" arbiter in order to be a moral being.

Order, Needs, Sacred

Source: www.spiegel.de

A little bit of one story joins onto an idea from another, and hey presto, . . . not old tales but new ones. Nothing comes from nothing.

Ideas, Stories, Hey

The world is about the way in which our dreams intersect with our real life. Endlessly, the world of the imagination changes the world.

Dream, Real, Imagination

Interview with Terry Gilliam, www.believermag.com. March 2003.

It may be that the books that were best liked in your lifetime are not the ones that are best liked 100 years later.

Book, Years, May

"TalkAsia" with Monita Rajpal, www.cnn.com. February 8, 2013.

YouTube is full of pieces of trash. If you want to look on YouTube and find something that insults you, you can probably find it.

Insults You, Pieces, Want

thought I was doing two things. One is inquiring into the phenomenon of revelation, if you are not a religious person. But, clearly, it's a sincere phenomenon.

Religious, Two, Inquiring

When we stop believing in the gods we can start believing in their stories.

Believe, Stories

Salman Rushdie (2000). “The Ground Beneath Her Feet: A Novel”, p.458, Macmillan

Between shame and shamelessness lies the axis upon which we turn; meteorological conditions at both these poles are of the most extreme, ferocious type. Shamelessness, shame: the roots of violence.

Lying, Axes, Roots

The rate of change is global now. I think there's a kind of mind that is so ill at ease with that transformation that it reaches out for something permanent. And religious faith offers that, from simplicities, which you are told are eternal and unchanging, and you can hold on to those like a life raft in a metamorphosing world.

Religious, Thinking, Simplicity

Source: www.teachingbooks.net

There's a lot of conflict and darkness inside everybody's family. We all pretend to outsiders that it's not so but behind locked doors there are usually high emotions running.

Running, Doors, Darkness

"Salman Rushdie: My family values". Interview with Anita Sethi, www.theguardian.com. December 14, 2012.

When we stop believing in gods we can start believing in their stories, I retort. There are of course no such things as miracles, but if there were and so tomorrow we woke up to find no more believers on earth, no more devout Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, why then, sure the beauty of the stories would be a thing we could focus on because they wouldn't be dangerous any more, they would become capable of compelling the only belief that leads to truth, that is, the willing, disbelieving of the reader in a well-told tale.

Christian, Believe, Focus

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