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Salman Rushdie Quotes - Page 18

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

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

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

World, Opinion, Argument

Certainly, poverty and economic decline have a lot to do with the so-called rage of Islam. You've got all these young men in countries which are economically in bad shape. The idea that they might be able to make a good living and get married and have a family, a decent life, seems very remote to a lot of people in a lot of the world.

Country, Men, Ideas

Anyone who has had the experience of going through American security checks knows the purpose of these checks is not to make you safer; it's just to annoy you.

Purpose, Annoying, Checks

Writers have been in terrible situations and have yet managed to produce extraordinary work.

Produce, Terrible, Situation

Someone asked me if I was afraid to write my memoirs. I told him: 'We have to stop drawing up accounts of fear! We live in a society in which people are allowed to tell their story, and that is what I do.'

Writing, Drawing, People

You don't fight radical conservatism with not-quite-so radical conservatism.

Fighting, Radical, Conservatism

"Salman Rushdie: Inside the Mind of Jihadists". Interview with Nathan Gardels, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 25, 2011.

I don't feel American. I do feel like a New Yorker. I think there's a real distinction there. A city allows you to become a citizen even when you're not a national.

Real, Thinking, Cities

I do think of Bombay as my hometown. Those are the streets I walked when I was learning to walk. And it's the place that my imagination has returned to more than anywhere else.

Thinking, Imagination, Bombay

It's so disappointing, to put it mildly, that people know so much about my life. Because it means that they're always trying to look at my books in terms of my life.

Book, Mean, Always Trying

"'I have the hatred in a trunk in storage'". Interview with Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. August 29, 2005.

Doris Lessing really doesn't care what the critics say. In fact, she orders her publishers not to send her the reviews and gets cross with them if they do because she doesn't want that in her head. She's going where she's going, and that's where she wants to go.

Order, Care, Want

When you have children, your perspective on the parent-child relationship alters.

Children, Perspective, Parent

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

The Christian Coalition is still about Christianity, even if it's an idea of Christianity that many Christians might not go along with.

Christian, Ideas, Might

"The Iconoclast". Interview with Shikha Dalmia, reason.com. August/September 2005.

If you live in free countries, you don't have to spend all your life arguing about freedom because it is all around you. It seems redundant to make a lot of noise about something when, in fact, there it is. But if someone tries to remove it, it becomes important for you to formulate your own defenses of it.

Country, Important, Trying

"The Iconoclast". Interview with Shikha Dalmia, reason.com. August/September 2005.

If the culture shifts, if people think differently about women, the art will shift, too. You can't ask art to make social change. It's not what it's for.

Art, Thinking, People

"Salman Rushdie, Deepa Mehta: Movies Not to Blame for Real-World Violence (Q&A)". "Hollywood Reporter" Interview, www.hollywoodreporter.com. January 30, 2013.

If I were dead, then nobody in England would have to fuss about the cost of my security and whether or not I merited such special treatment for so long.

Long, Special, Cost

If I had simply wanted to trade on an insult to Islam, I could have done it in a sentence rather than writing a 250,000-word novel, a work of fiction.

Writing, Islam, Fiction

I've met the Dalai Lama briefly, but I would probably say my grandfather was the wisest person I ever met. He was my mother's father, an Indian, a family doctor, and very unlike me in that he was deeply religious.

Mother, Religious, Father

I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a bad rap from history, and that he was actually a person quite unlike what we now think of as Machiavellian. He was a republican. He disliked totalitarian government.

Rap, Thinking, Government

"Salman Rushdie Spins a Yarn". Interview with James Mustich, www.barnesandnoble.com. June 2, 2008.

I'm a reader of Chinese literature, I like their films, but also: I've had great difficulty getting my work published in China; very little of it has been published there. The first two attempts to have all of my work published, for instance, were refused without any reason ever being given.

Two, Chinese, Literature

There is no such thing as perfect security, only varying levels of insecurity.

Perfect, Insecurity, Levels

You don't that often see writers being sought out when there are matters of great moment to discuss. And I think that's a loss.

Loss, Thinking, Matter

When I'm writing a book, sentence by sentence, I'm not thinking theoretically. I'm just trying to work out the story from inside the characters I've got.

Book, Writing, Character

I always thought storytelling was like juggling [...] You keep a lot of different tales in the air, and juggle them up and down, and if you're good you don't drop any.

Air, Different, Down And

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

An iceberg is water striving to be land; a mountain, especially a Himalaya, especially Everest, is land's attempt to metamorphose into sky; it is grounded in flight, the earth mutated--nearly--into air, and become, in the true sense, exalted. Long before she ever encountered the mountain, Allie was aware of its brooding presence in her soul.

Air, Land, Sky

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

Travel was pointless. It removed you from the place in which you had a meaning, and to which you gave meaning in return by dedicating your life to it, and it spirited you away into fairylands where you were, and looked, frankly absurd.

Return, Absurd, Spirited

"The Shelter of the World". www.newyorker.com. February 25, 2008.

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