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Salman Rushdie Quotes - Page 23

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

The difference between memoir and autobiography, as far as I see it, is that a memoir is there primarily to tell one particular story, whereas an autobiography tries to be a full account of a life.

The difference between memoir and autobiography, as far as I see it, is that a memoir is there primarily to tell one particular story, whereas an autobiography tries to be a full account of a life.

Differences, Trying, Stories

Sometimes I think that when people become famous, there's a public perception that they are not human beings any more. They don't have feelings; they don't get hurt; you can act and say as you like about them.

Hurt, Thinking, People

Rohinton Mistry's celebrated novel 'Such a Long Journey' was pulled off the syllabus of Mumbai University because local extremists objected to its content.

Journey, Long, Mumbai

Pakistan is alarmed by the rising Indian influence in Afghanistan, and fears that an Afghanistan cleansed of the Taliban would be an Indian client state, thus sandwiching Pakistan between two hostile countries. The paranoia of Pakistan about India's supposed dark machinations should never be underestimated.

Country, Dark, Two

What kind of a god is it that's upset by a cartoon in Danish?

Upset, Cartoon, Kind

Interview with Bill Moyers, www.pbs.org. June 23, 2006.

Out-of-step intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and the deceased Edward Said have often been dismissed as crazy extremists, 'anti-American,' and in Mr. Said's case even, absurdly, as apologists for Palestinian 'terrorism.'

Crazy, Steps, Terrorism

One minute you've got a lucky star watching over you and the next instant it's done a bunk.

Stars, Over You, Lucky

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

Language upon a silvered tongue affords enchantment enough.

Enchantment, Tongue, Language

Salman Rushdie (2008). “The Enchantress of Florence”, p.75, Random House

I don't think I've ever quite grown out of it, actually. There was a point where I could recite some of those Elvish verses - which I've mercifully forgotten. But I can still, if really pushed, recite the text of the inside of the ruling ring in the language of Mordor.

Thinking, Language, Forgotten

What grows best in the heat: fantasy; unreason; lust.

Lust, Heat, Fantasy

Salman Rushdie (2010). “Midnight's Children”, p.231, Random House

In Europe, the Enlightenment of the 18th century was seen as a battle against the desire of the Church to limit intellectual freedom, a battle against the Inquisition, a battle against religious censorship. And the victory of the Enlightenment in Europe was seen as pushing religion away from the center of power. In America, at the same time, the Enlightenment meant coming to a country where people were not going to persecute you by reason of your religion. So it meant a liberation into religion. In Europe, it was liberation out of religion.

Country, Religious, America

"The Iconoclast". Interview with Shikha Dalmia, reason.org. August 1, 2005.

We must conclude that it is not only a particular political ideology that has failed, but the idea that men and women could ever define themselves in terms that exclude their spiritual needs.

Spiritual, Men, Ideas

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

The only privilege literature deserves - and this privilege it requires in order to exist - is the privilege of being in the arena of discourse, the place where the struggle of our languages can be acted out.

Struggle, Order, Literature

I have been only the humblest jugglers-with-facts; and that, in a country where the truth is what it is instructed to be, reality quite literally ceases to exist, so that everything becomes possible except what we are told is the case; and maybe this was the difference between my Indian childhood and Pakistani adolescence--that in the first I was beset by an infinity of alternative realities, while in the second I was adrift, disoriented, amid an equally infinite number of falsenesses, unrealities and lies.

Country, Lying, Reality

Sometimes, people trying to commit suicide manage it in a manner that leaves them breathless with astonishment.

Suicide, People, Trying

My love for Dan Brown knows no bounds. It literally has no mass.

Brown, Mass, Knows

Free speech is life itself.

Speech, Censorship, Free Speech

"Excerpts From Rushdie's Address: 1,000 Days 'Trapped Inside a Metaphor'". www.nytimes.com. December 12, 1991.

Sometimes we feel we straddle two cultures; at other times, that we fall between two stools.

Fall, Two, Culture

Salman Rushdie (2012). “Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991”, p.12, Random House

Unless, of course, there's no such thing as chance;...in which case, we should either-optimistically-get up and cheer, because if everything is planned in advance, then we all have a meaning and are spared the terror of knowing ourselves to be random, without a why; or else, of course, we might-as pessimists-give up right here and now, understanding the futility of thought decision action, since nothing we think makes any difference anyway, things will be as they will. Where, then, is optimism? In fate or in chaos?

Cheer, Giving Up, Fate

If love is a yearning to be like (even to become) the beloved, then hatred, it must be said, can be engendered by the same ambition, when it cannot be fulfilled.

Ambition, Love Is, Hatred

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

All migrants leave their pasts behind, although some try to pack it into bundles and boxes-but on the journey something seeps out of the treasured mementoes and old photographs, until even their owners fail to recognize them, because it is the fate of migrants to be stripped of history, to stand naked amidst the scorn of strangers upon whom they see rich clothing, the brocades of continuity and the eyebrows of belonging.

Fate, Past, Journey

Whores and writers, Mahound. We are the people you can't forgive.

Writing, People, Forgiving

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

Sometimes by a woodland stream he watched the water rush over the pebbled bed, its tiny modulations of bounce and flow. A woman's body was like that. If you watched it carefully enough you could see how it moved to the rhythm of the world, the deep rhythm, the music below the music, the truth below the truth. He believed in this hidden truth the way other men believed in God or love, believed that truth was in fact always hidden, that the apparent, the overt, was invariably a kind of lie.

Lying, Men, Water

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.

Hate, Night, August

Life is elsewhere. Cross frontiers. Fly away.

Life Is, Fly Away, Crosses

Salman Rushdie (2000). “The Ground Beneath Her Feet: A Novel”, p.146, Macmillan

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