Do not start me on The Da Vinci Code ... a novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name."

(Discussion at Woodruff Auditorium in Lawrence, KS; October 7, 2005.)


Salman Rushdie

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Feeling bad is not the problem.
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O...
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People always ask me
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TIM MCGRAW
I love being with yo so bad
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I might kiss you.
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That's not possible.
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It gives corporate Australia a bad name.
GERRY HARVEY
Quote: You've got bad eating habits if you use a grocery cart in 7-Eleven okay?


DENNIS MILLER
This is a bad story.”
“Sorry. I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have told you.”
“N...
EMMA DONOGHUE
Horton, the kangaroo has sent Vlad!'
Vlad? I know two Vlads. One is a cute little bunny that br...
DR. SEUSS
Coincidence was a concept he did not entirely trust. As someone who had spent his life exploring the...
DAN BROWN
I know you think I am a bad
boy, a bad dog, Bang-Bang told him
with a pointed stare. He pl...
SUSAN GRANT
Is it a very wicked place?" I asked, more for the sake of saying something than for information.
CHARLES DICKENS
You can’t be a bad girl, unless you actually do something bad."

-Megan Barnett
E. VAN LOWE
How do you feel right now?"
"I hurt like hell."
"You'll feel worse tomorrow."
"So?"<...
RICHELLE MEAD
Why do want to find him so bad?’ I ask after a while, but she’s not listening. I watch her a bit...
CATH CROWLEY
Tom Hanks, who starred in 'The Da Vinci Code,' turns out to be related to a number of the hi...
STEVEN PINKER
We were kissing.
I thought: This is good.
I thought: I am not bad at this kissing. Not bad...
JOHN GREEN
Some are sad.
And some are glad.
And some are very, very bad.


Why are the...
DR. SEUSS
You want a fact???
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I'm bad at math but good at chess, I beat the best guy on chess... ...
DEYTH BANGER
Finally Marcus stepped forward. "If you insist on going through me to get him, it's your call. But I...
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Joe: Oo, Brittany "Aren't I Fabulous?" Hobson?
Addie: She's not that bad.
Joe: Brittany "A...
JAMES HOWE
October is not all that bad, but there have been some eye-catching examples that have fed the folklo...
RICHARD MCCABE
I sure do miss that woman. Smart. Funny. Sweet. She never gave me a moment's trouble."

"G...
SUSAN ELIZABETH PHILLIPS
The ones that I do make mistakes, they are not as bad as the bad ones I used to do, so my bad is not...
VIJAY SINGH
It was not bad. I had to fight back after the bad start.
CHRISTINE ARRON
Bad questions at employment interviews:

"Is your drug test graded on a curve?
NEIL LECKMAN
Well I got a bad liver and broken heart,
yeah,I drunk me a river since you
tore me apart
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All good books are different but all bad books are exactly the same. I know this to be a fact becaus...
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My muscles informed me they did not want to go through any more exercise today. So I suggest that ma...
RICHELLE MEAD
I can't help but laugh into my next sip of water. For the first time, mine doesn't seem so bad.
KRISTA RITCHIE
You know how we tell the good guys from the bad guys? The bad guys shoot at us."

Best les...
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Because the horror of Communism, Stalinism, is not that bad people do bad things — they always do....
SLAVOJ ŽIžEK
I love rainy and bad-weather days because this type of weather gives me a mental advantage, especial...
GARY KLEIN
Just as good books give me the joys of being alive, bad novels depress me, and as I notice this sent...
ORHAN PAMUK
I think that pretty much every form of fiction (I’d include fantasy, obviously) can actually be a ...
NEIL GAIMAN
I don't think many people will re-read 'The Da Vinci Code.'
IAN MCKELLEN
When boys get mad its not so bad
When girls get mad world WW3 is about to start!
P.C. CAST
I really enjoyed reading 'The Da Vinci Code,' but from a literary standpoint, the book did n...
CECILIA DART-THORNTON
Many Scandinavian writers who had made their name in literary fiction felt they wanted to have a go ...
JO NESBO
Nobody wants to admit to this, but bad things will keep on happening. Maybe that's beause it's all a...
JODI PICOULT
But with dogs, we do have "bad dog." Bad dog exists. "Bad dog! Bad dog! Stole a biscuit, bad dog!" T...
EDDIE IZZARD
…I've had a bad week."
What's happened?"
Nothing's happened. I've had a bad week in my h...
NICK HORNBY
We'll act as if all this were a bad dream."

A bad dream.

To the person in the ...
SYLVIA PLATH
Any questions?"
"Ya why do your drawings suck so bad?
TITE KUBO
May be its mine bad-luck
Or yours not to get me
But I still have hope
Of being you...
HASIL PAUDYAL
Percy?" Annabeth gripped his arm.
"Oh, bad," he muttered. "Bad. Bad." He looked across the tabl...
RICK RIORDAN
I was really good at being a bad guy; I like that role. Not being bad to people - just talking bad.
RIC FLAIR
While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.
-Leonardo Da ...
OLIVER BOWDEN
Marlin: How do you know that nothing bad won't happen?
Dory: I don't.
FINDING NEMO
Adam thinks that you two are in an argument."
My body zinged into alert mode. My mind didn't kn...
JENNIFER ECHOLS
Yes I can,” Curran snarled. “Listen: this is me telling you what you will not do.”
I rais...
ILONA ANDREWS
How're the Broncos doing?"
"Like a bunch of carrots."
"Is that bad?"
"Can carrots pla...
NICHOLAS SPARKS
You should shower," I said. "Right now."

"I smell that bad?"

Actually, he smel...
BECCA FITZPATRICK
You look like you belong in a bad comic book,” I told him cheerfully.
----------------------<...
ALYXANDRA HARVEY
All the same, Thomas now had a plan. As bad as it was, he had a plan.
They needed more clues ab...
JAMES DASHNER
Treat me well and I will tell...
Treat me bad and I feel sad.
Treat me good, change my m...
ANA CLAUDIA ANTUNES
He isn't so bad."
"You're not fake-married to him.
KRISTIN WALKER
I learned the bad guys are not always bad, the good guys are not always good, and to quote Captain B...
SHERRILYN KENYON
Because sometimes in life, sweetheart. The bad guys win

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ASHLEY JADE
Can I buy you a drink when you get off?"

"I don't drink. Alcohol is bad for my legs."
ERIC JEROME DICKEY
I felt like I had a really bad case of writer's block... Music is so therapeutic for me that if ...
EMINEM
Since you are so well matched, and so much alike - a very bad wife, and a very bad husband - I wonde...
MARCUS AURELIUS
I had an accident."

"That seemes to happen a lot."

"It wasn't my fault."
...
RICHELLE MEAD
Don't look now, but that's my ex over there."
Surely I'm not the only one who takes "don't look...
GENA SHOWALTER
Good judgment comes from bad experience. Unfortunately, most of that comes from bad judgment.
<...
JILL SHALVIS
Thorne shuffled his feet. “You know, if it was a bad kiss, you can just say so.”
She stiffe...
MARISSA MEYER
Coffee gives me bad breath.
NORAH JONES
Those are the bad guys, right?”
“Depends on who wins, I guess.
SHANNON A. THOMPSON
Bad magic, Kell had called it.
No, thought Lila now. Clever magic.
An...
VICTORIA SCHWAB
You had a bad day once, am I right? I know I am.
I can tell. You had a bad day and everything ...
ALAN MOORE
If Da Vinci had to tweet 5 times a day,
we’d still be riding bicycles.
NATASHA TSAKOS
As sonner began as sooner finished... the guilt is after you. I feel it, I see it and I smell you ha...
DEYTH BANGER
Me: I think we should have sex again.
Royce: Bad idea.
Me: Why?
Royce: I want more fr...
GENA SHOWALTER
Okay… This looks bad.

You cowboy around with the Avengers some. Guys got, what, armor. ...
MATT FRACTION
Bad mind, bad heart.
(Mals Mens, Malus Animus)
ANACHARSIS CLOOTS
If you do not have the strength to forgive,
then compel themselves and continue in that, do not...
SANEL ALIć
Oh - You're a very bad man!"

Oh, no my dear. I'm a very good man. I'm just a very bad Wiz...
L. FRANK BAUM
For a long time things were so bad. Very bad. Dark even when there was light.
The only thing th...
DEAN KOONTZ
A LIE IS LIKE A BAD NEIGHBORHOOD;
IT'S NOT SAFE TO LIVE IN
QWANA REYNOLDS-FRASIER
I want to get ready, I really do, but I have a bad feeling about today," I said, lowering my voice f...
E. VAN LOWE
When something bad is written about me, I find it hurtful. So I choose not to look at it.
PATSY KENSIT
When you think things are bad,
when you feel sour and blue,
when you start to get mad... DR. SEUSS
I miss you. I miss you so fucking bad it hurts, but I don't know how to find you even though you'...
J.R. WARD
Dreams like a podcast,
Downloading truth in my ears.
They tell me cool stuff."
"Apoll...
RICK RIORDAN
I feel bad it happened. I feel bad for the guy and I feel bad for our team. I put the team in a bad ...
DENNIS GAUTHIER
You’re not going to take advantage of me, are you?” The cushions felt so nice behind her head. I...
KADY CROSS
Once, when I was young and true.
Someone left me sad -
Broke my brittle heart in two;
DOROTHY PARKER
If you are reading this... I'm dead so far probably or still alive who knows?
It's bad day in b...
DEYTH BANGER
I am Shiloh, whose box you stole. Your godmother's sickness lies in your own keeping, you can heal h...
A.E. COPPARD
It's been known as Sin City forever. It's good and it's bad. It's bad because it gives the city a ba...
DAVE PASSADOR
Music is so therapeutic for me that if I can't get it out, I start feeling bad about myself - a ...
EMINEM
You can make the case that bad things happen in October.
ROBERT BRUSCA
I think it's important to recognise that 'The Da Vinci Code' opened up a vast new audien...
ELIZABETH KOSTOVA
I guess I just feel bad that I'm still going on bad dates when I should really be in a bad marri...
LAURA KIGHTLINGER
So shall the world go on,
To good malignant, to bad men benign,
Under her own weight groan...
JOHN MILTON
Once when I was young and true,
Someone left me sad-
Broke my brittle heart in two;
And ...
DOROTHY PARKER

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Don't let the zealots make Muslim a terrifying word."

[1,000 Days 'Trapped Inside a Me...
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A poet's work is to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shap...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, sha...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
Free societies are societies in motion, and with motion comes friction.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
If you're on a freeway and want to know if you're being followed, what you do is enormously ...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
In the real world, immeasurable hurt is caused by terrorists based in Pakistan who attack countries ...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy
SALMAN RUSHDIE
The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because ...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
What I've always tried to find in my books are points at which the private lives of the characte...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
wants the dreadful, wants to stare down the human race's worst-case scenarios.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
Rohinton Mistry's celebrated novel 'Such a Long Journey' was pulled off the syllabus of ...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
Meanwhile, it seems, the world is suffering from compassion fatigue,
SALMAN RUSHDIE
I've never seen anywhere in the world as beautiful as Kashmir. It has something to do with the f...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
The enemy for the fanatic is pleasure, which makes it extremely important to continue to indulge in ...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
Matthew Wiener on 'Mad Men' writes the entire series before they start shooting, and if you ...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
Someone asked me if I was afraid to write my memoirs. I told him: 'We have to stop drawing up ac...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
I only met Margaret Thatcher twice. The thing that I thought about meeting her was how extraordinari...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
A change in direction was required. The story you finished was perhaps never the one you began. Yes!...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
In today's U.S., it's possible for almost anyone - women, gays, African-Americans, Jews - to...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
When 'Midnight's Children' came out, people in the West tended to respond to the fantasy...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
The accidents of my life have given me the ability to make stories in which different parts of the w...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
Sometimes writing a novel is not unlike having a baby. You'd have to ask a female novelist to co...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
I have a deep feeling for Kashmir, and I just had to write this book, ... [But] it's very hard to wr...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
One of the strange things that happens when you publish a book is that you begin ... to see what res...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
The real risks for any artist are taken in pushing the work to the limits of what is possible, in th...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
Most of what matters in your life takes place in your absence.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
Friendships are the family we make - not the one we inherit. I've always been someone to whom fr...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
I didn't want to become some embittered old hack getting his revenge for the rest of my life. An...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
antediluvian, who think of homosexuality as ungodly, who have little time for real freedom of expres...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plaus...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to ...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
At sixteen, you still think you can escape from your father. You aren't listening to his voice speak...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
There is a widespread difficulty in the Muslim world, which has to do with how the people are taught...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
I remember when I was young, many cities in the Muslim world were cosmopolitan cities with a lot of ...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
There'll be one track that I like and a lot of it that is just wallpaper and sounds the same.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another's, were no longer our own, individual, discrete.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
If I were asked for a one-sentence sound
bite on religion, I would say I was against it.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
I used to write a monthly column for the 'New York Times' syndicate. But I stopped because I...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
If you were an atheist, Birbal," the Emperor challenged his first minister, "what would you say to t...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
It matters, it always matters, to name rubbish as rubbish … to do otherwise is to legitimize it."<...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
One of the things I've learnt is not to depend on there being a woman in your life to make it wo...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
The fundamentalist seeks to bring down a great deal more than buildings. Such people are against, to...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
Repression is a seamless garment; a society which is authoritarian in its social and sexual codes, w...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
When a book leaves its author's desk it changes. Even before anyone has read it, before eyes other t...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
Always do something impossible right at the beginning of the show?. Swallow a sword, tie yourself in...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
I've tried to live without fear. Fear paralyzes you. I've tried to get on with my life.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
I've been gradually reclaiming all kinds of freedoms over these years..,
SALMAN RUSHDIE
Obviously, it is a very great honor and I'm very pleased to have it, and it's very nice to be recogn...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
I think it's a stupid way to read a book, ... to say that because something happens to one person th...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
Life is fury, he'd thought. Fury — sexual, Oedipal, political, magical, brutal — drives us to ou...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
If I were asked for a one-sentence sound bite on religion, I would say I was against it
SALMAN RUSHDIE
Masks beneath masks until suddenly the bare bloodless skull.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
Nobody ever wanted to go to war, but if a war came your way, it might as well be the right war, abou...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
A question I have often asked is, ‘What would an inoffensive political cartoon look like?’ What ...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
What one writer can make in the solitude of one room is something no power can easily destroy.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
Many of us persons of the tinted persuasion care about human rights and artistic freedom too.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
From such defensive, separated worlds some youngsters have indefensibly stepped across a moral line ...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
Susan Sontag was a great literary artist,"a fearless and original thinker, ever valiant for truth, a...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
However, in the end, the question [remains]: Why him and not the man standing next to him? Why did t...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
The Satanic Verses.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
Rock and roll music - the music of freedom frightens people and unleashes all manner of conservative...
SALMAN RUSHDIE