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Salman Rushdie Quotes - Page 5

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

I've been worrying about God a little bit lately... It seems like he's been in a bad mood. And I think it has to do with the quality of lovers he's been getting.

I've been worrying about God a little bit lately... It seems like he's been in a bad mood. And I think it has to do with the quality of lovers he's been getting.

Thinking, Worry, Quality

"Real Time with Bill Maher", October 7, 2005.

In the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the nonbelongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks.

Dream, Song, Art

Salman Rushdie (2000). “The Ground Beneath Her Feet: A Novel”, p.73, Macmillan

I write books I'd enjoy reading, I'm the reader standing behind my shoulder.

Book, Reading, Writing

When a reader falls in love with a book, it leaves its essence inside him, like radioactive fallout in an arable field, and after that there are certain crops that will no longer grow in him, while other, stranger, more fantastic growths may occasionally be produced.

Falling In Love, Book, Essence

What kind of idea are you? Are you the kind that compromises, does deals, accomodates itself to society, aims to find a niche, to survive; or are you the cussed, bloody-minded, ramrod-backed type of damnfool notion that would rather break than sway with the breeze? – The kind that will almost certainly, ninety-nine times out of hundred, be smashed to bits; but, the hundredth time, will change the world.

Life, Ninety Nine, Ideas

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

One of the things a writer is for is to say the unsayable, speak the unspeakable and ask difficult questions.

Writing, Difficult Questions, Speak

In spite of all evidence that life is discontinuous, a valley of rifts, and that random chance plays a great part in our fates, we go on believing in the continuity of things, in causation and meaning. But we live on a broken mirror, and fresh cracks appear in its surface every day.

Believe, Fate, Play

Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart.

Heart, Imagination, Literature

The Hindu, February 26, 1995.

Of course, there is nothing intrinsic linking any religion with any act of violence. The crusades don't prove that Christianity was violent. The Inquisition doesn't prove that Christianity tortures people. But that Christianity did torture people.

People, Violence, Christianity

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

People can do bad things with free speech as well as good. You have to defend the Ku Klux Klan as well as Martin Luther King. It's like that. If you're going to defend the principle, then you have to defend people who use the principle badly.

Kings, Ku Klux Klan, People

Source: www.teachingbooks.net

Sometimes great, banned works defy the censor's description and impose themselves on the world - 'Ulysses,' 'Lolita,' the 'Arabian Nights.'

Night, World, Sometimes

"On Censorship" by Salman Rushdie, www.newyorker.com. May 11, 2012.

Speaking as somebody with three sisters and a very largely female Muslim family, there is not a single woman I know in my family or in their friends who would have accepted the wearing of a veil.

Female, Three, Veils

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

I would argue that religion comes from a desire to get to the questions of, 'Where do we come from?' and 'How shall we live?' And I would say I don't need religion to answer those questions.

Desire, Needs, Answers

The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas - uncertainty, progress, change - into crimes.

Atheist, Ideas, Religion

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

I have never really thought of myself as a writer about religion. And I think one of the things that happened to me as a result of all that is that I think it did for some people, many people, obscure the kind of writer that I actually am.

Thinking, People, Kind

Source: www.pbs.org

When...did it become irrational to dislike religion, any religion, even to dislike it vehemently? When did reason get redescribed as unreason? When were the fairy stories of the superstitious placed above criticism, beyond satire? A religion was not a race. It was an idea, and ideas stood (or fell) because they were strong enough (or too weak) to withstand criticism, not because they were shielded from it. Strong ideas welcomed dissent.

Strong, Race, Fairy Stories

Salman Rushdie (2012). “Joseph Anton”, p.345, Random House

One of the problems with defending free speech is you often have to defend people that you find to be outrageous and unpleasant and disgusting.

People, Speech, Problem

Science fiction is always a vehicle for ideas. It's the form which allows either movies or books to be an exploration of how we should live.

Book, Ideas, Fiction

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

There are things you break that can't be put back together again. And Kashmir may be one of them.

Together Again, Kashmir, May

Source: www.sfgate.com

To understand just one life you have to swallow the world ... do you wonder, then, that I was a heavy child?

Life, Children, World

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

My parents gave me the gift of irreligion, of growing up without bothering to ask people what gods they held dear, assuming that in fact, like my parents, they weren't interested in gods, and that this uninterest was 'normal.' You may argue that the gift was a poisoned chalice, but even if so, that's a cup from which I'd happily drink again.

Growing Up, People, Parent

I've never seen anywhere in the world as beautiful as Kashmir. It has something to do with the fact that the valley is very small and the mountains are very big, so you have this miniature countryside surrounded by the Himalayas, and it's just spectacular. And it's true, the people are very beautiful too.

Beautiful, People, Mountain

"Salman Rushdie, The Art of Fiction No. 186". Interviewed with Jack Livings, The Paris Review, Issue 174, www.theparisreview.org. Summer 2005.

We were language's magpies by nature, stealing whatever sounded bright and shiny.

Language, Stealing, Magpies

Salman Rushdie (2000). “The Ground Beneath Her Feet: A Novel”, p.56, Macmillan

What one writer can make in the solitude of one room is something no power can easily destroy.

Powerful, Being Alone, Creativity

"East, west" by Alan Rafferty, www.theguardian.com. November 8, 2003.

Friendships are the family we make - not the one we inherit. I've always been someone to whom friendship, elective affinities, is as important as family.

Important, Affinity

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

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