It was, for him, an object lesson in the importance of the “better out than in” free speech argument—that it was better to allow even the most reprehensible speech than to sweep it under the carpet, better to publicly contest and perhaps deride what was loathsome than to give it the glamour of taboo, and that, for the most part, people could be trusted to tell the good from the bad.
Salman Rushdie
Related I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ... KELLY JONES Friendship is a double-edged sword one side it can be great and true but the other side it spells be... GARY F EVANS... 37. It is better to be single and unhappy than unhappily married. JAMES C. DOBSON Congratulations, to the people which made gotham series, still need some more and extra work! DEYTH BANGER Everyone always says how I'm so smart, but they don't know what it's like being me. always feeling l... SUSANE COLASANTI Time determines the occurrence of possibilities and impossibilities, but God determines the time for... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH May I never neither turn left nor turn right in my journey of life, but may I go straight to Christ ... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH The saying sell all your belongings & give to the poor simply means "Redirect your mind to the verit... DAVID ATTA (A.K.A DAVIED ATTLARS & MR DAIN) The unfortunate thing is that, sometimes, we slip, but, fortunately, consciously or unconsciously, w... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Wake every morning with the same feeling. Live up high and fly on top of the ceiling. I just know th... ANA CLAUDIA ANTUNES We're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive. It's pretty dense kid... KURT VONNEGUT How should I know?" said Alice, surprised at her own courage. "It's no business of mine." The Q... LEWIS CARROLL To have the cognitive abilities to do research and development is vital to a forever expanding world... GARY F EVANS... The first and foremost human right or fundamental right is the right to exist. APURVA GAGLANI If we ever put research into what the subconscious is we could probably come to the conclusion that ... GARY F EVANS... i know im not the girl you wanted. not the one you want to hear from. but what you see is what you g... SIMI GREWAL Don't you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it?... ERNEST HEMINGWAY To make one mistake, and then fix it. It shows, a sign that you have understood the lesson. DEYTH BANGER Be kind. We never know what people are going through. Give grace and mercy because one day your circ... GERMANY KENT Life can only be understood looking backward. It must be lived forward. ERIC ROTH You're afraid of getting hurt like I'm afraid to die. It doesn't mean I'm not going to live every da... VI KEELAND Wesley Rush doesn't chase girls, but I'm chasing you. KODY KEPLINGER I turn and kick with the first one and feel myself being lifted and thrown towards the beach. It's l... MARK SMITH What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough ... DOUGLAS ADAMS One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit o... DOUGLAS ADAMS Tell your story to the universe and Let your actions speak LOVE.' No matter what it is. NAPZ CHERUB PELLAZO She parted her lips as though she were going to scold him, but, after a moment of sitting with her m... KELSEY BRICKL I don't spend a lot of time asking "WHY?" Instead I focus on what I should do now or how I should re... JEFF DIXON-THE KEY TO THE KINGDOM Use your heart. Understand. Learn to see things in the now, not as they were or will be, or as ... E.J. PATTEN Now is everything Now is the essence Now is the focus Focus on the now For that ... KAREN HACKEL Anyways, that very same night there was a fight in the casino on B Deck. Some of the passengers got ... CHRISTINA ENGELA Creativity is not just thinking outside the box but living outside it. VICTOR SHAMAS One must simply take the days of their lives as they happen. If you spend time worrying over what is... R.J. GONZALES Kindness is universal. Sometimes being kind allows others to see the goodness in humanity through yo... GERMANY KENT Anything that is exclusive will be accused of elitism; living one’s dreams will be called pretenti... FENNEL HUDSON I don't define lust as anything evil or nasty. Lust as defined by me, is the feeling of desire: a de... C. JOYBELL C. Clay in the hands of a good potter suffers so many good turns, but in the end, we see its real and t... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH The rules only applied to people who couldn’t afford different rules. CAMERON STRACHER Life is a competition to eliminate fear and doubts to double our life to live better not bitter in t... NAZIM AMBALATH I think that many people will intentionally overlook all of the lifeless facts about their relations... C. JOYBELL C. Time is a teacher which in the end it kills all it's students. (Synchronicity 2015 Film) DEYTH BANGER Reach out and help others. If you have the power to make someone happy, do it. Be a vessel, be the c... GERMANY KENT Move forward doesn´t mean avoiding the pain, but look towards a new day in spite of the rain. ANA CLAUDIA ANTUNES Another year is ending, but something is pending ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Smiling at death seems like a pretty bold act. And so I smile like a damned fool. EMM COLE We need to embrace every day and enjoy it as much as we can. KAREN TODD SCARPULLA Judge not lest ye be judged. THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW Always Be Ready For Anything that Comes: Bananas, Chips, College, an Opportunity, so when it does yo... DANIEL OJEDA If you want to marry me, here's what you'll have to do: You must learn how to make a perfect ch... SHEL SILVERSTEIN - Mrzim sve što je odricanje! - Ni ja, Ivane, ne pristajem da se odričem. Ja hoću ceo, sav, ... DOBRICA ĆOSIć In the beginning the Universe was created. This had made many people very angry and has been wi... DOUGLAS ADAMS There was a terribly ghastly silence. There was a terribly ghastly noise. There was a terr... DOUGLAS ADAMS She was restless. She drove a little too fast, swam a little too far offshore. She hitchhiked. She s... ELIZABETH WINDER Boring people live boring lives. HABEEB AKANDE Can I buy you a drink when you get off?" "I don't drink. Alcohol is bad for my legs." ERIC JEROME DICKEY He'd never forget what Naasir had said to him when Dmitri yelled that he didn't intend to bury anoth... NALINI SINGH Seeking survival, hostile, hidden from sight, Deliciously flavoured - juicy, sweet bite, E... CLAUDIA BAKKER He muttered something foul and then climbed the stairs, rapping twice on Timmie’s door. “Ri... JEANIENE FROST In the journey of life, certain paths may seem to be leading nowhere because of a mountain or hill o... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Don't let fear cripple you and keep you from trying new things, changing things, exploring and livin... AKIROQ BROST Name the fears that are holding you back. It's the equivalent of flooding the boogeyman with light. GINA GREENLEE Let your light shine as an inspiration to humanity and BE THE REASON someone believes in the goodnes... GERMANY KENT Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it SARA SHEPARD What if you are wrong? What if the gods sent you, and indeed the rest of us, not because we were nev... MARIE LU Food Allergies Are Not Due to Food, Rather Are Due to the Constant Contamination of That Food That Y... THEHEALTHFOODGURU until we do what has not yet been done, what has not been done shall remain undone ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH His problem is that he doesn’t want anyone until he can have anyone he wants. CLIFFORD COHEN Pain has creative power, Let the magic unfold... HENNA SOHAIL Now is the only time we have, and the only time that we have any control over. RICHARD CARLSON That's why we seize the moment try to freeze it and own it, squeeze it and hold it. EMINEM Satire dramatizes better than any other use of it, the inherent contradiction of free speech that it... TONY HENDRA I hate that just because you happen to be good at something,people automatically think that's what m... AMBER SMITH And the day came out... the mask was removed... and who was behind it? ... No Face... a pe... DEYTH BANGER The love you get, is equal to the love you give. BEN OAK If God give you strength and courage, don't use it to intimidate people or overpower them, rather us... ANTHONY LICCIONE From the Kindle Book Reflections in the Mirror of Life: “In a slum somewhere in India As... THE PROPHET OF LIFE The king may rule the kingdom, but it's the queen who moves the board. D.M. TIMNEY Entrepreneur, you're either raising the bar of excellence or, you're exhaling at the bar which is ex... ONYI ANYADO Before I got here, I thought that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it didn't exist, ... JOHN GREEN He's for you and wants to help you be the person He created you to be. CRAIG GROESCHEL The scientific method gives us
information by testing and repeating observable things so that we
can... LEWIS N. ROE I'm not a broken down car, that you can just push on down the street.. I'm a girl that's in love wit... AUDRA BUKAUSKAS All that the spider needs to complete its web is step taking ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Leave the problems of God to God and karma to karma. Today you're here and nothing you do will chang... JAMES CLAVELL I have a dream, I have a vision, I have a mission, I have to do something, I will do this at this ti... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Don't tell me you're one of those people who becomes their disease. I know so many people like that.... JOHN GREEN Marvin was humming ironically because he hated humans so much. DOUGLAS ADAMS The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizab... DOUGLAS ADAMS God's Final Message to His Creation: 'We apologize for the inconvenience. DOUGLAS ADAMS Everything we do really is just a little marker on the long road to death. And sometimes that’s ov... JOSS WHEDON Being clingy may work for puppies, but not for you. OSCAR AULIQ-ICE He created us for adventure, not ease. MARY E. DEMUTH You learned right away that applause sounds like love. AVA DELLAIRA ...we live on the edge of the abstract all the time. Look at something solid in the known world: an ... NATALIE GOLDBERG This Arthur Dent," comes the cry from the furthest reaches of the galaxy, and has even now been foun... DOUGLAS ADAMS The shoes always tell the story,' said the shoe poet. 'Not always,' I countered. 'Yes, alw... RUTA SEPETYS To have the time to reminisce is one of the futures gifts. Don't think to much, don't live to fast, ... CALVIN WILSON We are the masters of our own destinies we shape and mould our lives into to the circumstances surro... GARY F EVANS... I have better understanding how difficult and complex life can be, fortunately I know when not to ta... SHELLIE PALMER Now is the only time we have, and the only time we have any control over. RICHARD CARLSON
More Salman Rushdie
We are the storytelling animal. SALMAN RUSHDIE It is very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it. SALMAN RUSHDIE What happened in Pakistan was that people were told: You're all Muslim, so now you're a coun... SALMAN RUSHDIE If you're offended, it's your problem. SALMAN RUSHDIE War used to be something you could stand on the nearby hill and watch. Now we have total war; everyb... SALMAN RUSHDIE There is nothing intrinsic linking any religion with any act of violence. The crusades don't pro... SALMAN RUSHDIE The First Amendment defends all forms of speech including hate speech, which is why groups like Ku K... SALMAN RUSHDIE One of the problems with defending free speech is you often have to defend people that you find to b... SALMAN RUSHDIE When you write, you write out of your best self. Everything else drops away. SALMAN RUSHDIE What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist. SALMAN RUSHDIE Censorship is the thing that stops you doing what you want to do, and what writers want to talk abou... SALMAN RUSHDIE In an ideal world, you could reunite the Pakistan-occupied part of Kashmir with the Indian-occupied ... SALMAN RUSHDIE A purpose of our lives is to broaden what we can understand and say and therefore be. SALMAN RUSHDIE So India’s problem turns out to be the world’s problem. What happened in India has happened in G... SALMAN RUSHDIE No people whose word for 'yesterday' is the same as their word for 'tomorrow' can be said to have... SALMAN RUSHDIE The novel does not seek to establish a privileged language but it insists upon the freedom to portra... SALMAN RUSHDIE The acceptance that all that is solid has melted into the air, that reality and morality are not giv... SALMAN RUSHDIE Whores and writers, Mahound. We are the people you can't forgive. SALMAN RUSHDIE Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; t... SALMAN RUSHDIE I make no complaint. I am a writer. I do not accept my condition; I will strive to change it; but I ... SALMAN RUSHDIE I have been a film buff all my life and believe that the finest cinema is fully the equal of the bes... SALMAN RUSHDIE The suicide bomber's imagination leads him to believe in a brilliant act of heroism, when in fac... SALMAN RUSHDIE Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plaus... SALMAN RUSHDIE In writing 'The Satanic Verses,' I think I was writing for the first time from the whole of ... SALMAN RUSHDIE You can take the boy out of Bombay; you can't take Bombay out of the boy, you know. SALMAN RUSHDIE I do think of Bombay as my hometown. Those are the streets I walked when I was learning to walk. And... SALMAN RUSHDIE I have always thought, the secret purpose of the book tour is to make the writer hate the book he... SALMAN RUSHDIE Names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like s... SALMAN RUSHDIE One of the extraordinary things about human events is that the unthinkable becomes thinkable. SALMAN RUSHDIE When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy. SALMAN RUSHDIE A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape t... SALMAN RUSHDIE The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because ... SALMAN RUSHDIE I used to say: there is a God-shaped hole in me. For a long time I stressed the absence, the hole. N... 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 The writers of the French enlightenment had deliberately used blasphemy as a weapon, refusing to acc... SALMAN RUSHDIE This paranoid Islam, which blames outsider, 'infidels', for all the ills of Muslim societies... SALMAN RUSHDIE I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything do... SALMAN RUSHDIE If you want to tell the untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got to fi... SALMAN RUSHDIE The liveliness of literature lies in its exceptionality, in being the individual, idiosyncratic visi... SALMAN RUSHDIE The only privilege literature deserves -- and this privilege it requires in order to exist -- is the... SALMAN RUSHDIE Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human ... SALMAN RUSHDIE Literature is the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear v... SALMAN RUSHDIE We must conclude that it is not only a particular political ideology that has failed, but the idea t... SALMAN RUSHDIE In this world without quiet corners, there can be no easy escapes from history, from hullabaloo, fro... SALMAN RUSHDIE Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself. SALMAN RUSHDIE For the barbarians were not only at our gates but within our skins. We were our own wooden horses, e... SALMAN RUSHDIE Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts. SALMAN RUSHDIE Such is the miraculous nature of the future of exiles: what is first uttered in the impotence of an ... SALMAN RUSHDIE Your blasphemy, Salman, can't be forgiven. To set your words against the Words of God. SALMAN RUSHDIE Where there is no belief, there is no blasphemy. SALMAN RUSHDIE Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plaus... SALMAN RUSHDIE Vertigo is the conflict between the fear of falling and the desire to fall. SALMAN RUSHDIE Realism can break a writer's heart. SALMAN RUSHDIE Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, the power to retell it, rethi... SALMAN RUSHDIE ...because it is the privilige and the curse of midnight's children to be both masters and victims o... SALMAN RUSHDIE Thomas Pynchon looks exactly like Thomas Pynchon should look. He is tall, he wears lumberjack shirts... SALMAN RUSHDIE I hate admitting that my enemies have a point. SALMAN RUSHDIE Most American writers don't get asked their opinion on current affairs, whereas in Europe and En... SALMAN RUSHDIE Stories in families are colossally important. Every family has stories: some funny, some proud, some... SALMAN RUSHDIE I think, in a written novel, the way in which you play with the readers' emotion or the way in w... SALMAN RUSHDIE An attack upon our ability to tell stories is not just censorship - it is a crime against our nature... SALMAN RUSHDIE Pakistan is alarmed by the rising Indian influence in Afghanistan, and fears that an Afghanistan cle... SALMAN RUSHDIE British society has never been cleansed of the filth of imperialism. SALMAN RUSHDIE Straight answers were beyond the powers of Rashid Khalifa, who would never take a short cut if there... SALMAN RUSHDIE Self-censorship is a lie to yourself; if you are going to be trying to seriously create art, to crea... SALMAN RUSHDIE What's real and what's true aren't necessarily the same. SALMAN RUSHDIE Most of what matters in our lives takes place in our absence. SALMAN RUSHDIE faith without doubt is addiction SALMAN RUSHDIE Our lives disconnect and reconnect, we move on, and later we may again touch one another, again boun... SALMAN RUSHDIE The only people who see the whole picture,' he murmured, 'are the ones who step out of the frame. SALMAN RUSHDIE We all owe death a life. SALMAN RUSHDIE Free societies...are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free peo... SALMAN RUSHDIE To understand just one life you have to swallow the world ... do you wonder, then, that I was a heav... SALMAN RUSHDIE Nobody has the right to not be offended. That right doesn't exist in any declaration I have ever rea... SALMAN RUSHDIE A photograph is a moral decision taken in one eighth of a second. SALMAN RUSHDIE A poet's work . . . to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape... SALMAN RUSHDIE What kind of idea are you? Are you the kind that compromises, does deals, accomodates itself to soci... SALMAN RUSHDIE When a reader falls in love with a book, it leaves its essence inside him, like radioactive fallout ... SALMAN RUSHDIE Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you b... SALMAN RUSHDIE Now I know what a ghost is. Unfinished business, that's what. SALMAN RUSHDIE Memory's truth, because memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates... SALMAN RUSHDIE Whenever someone who knows you disappears, you lose one version of yourself. Yourself as you were se... SALMAN RUSHDIE Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true... SALMAN RUSHDIE My horizon's have shrunk and I have only endings to write. SALMAN RUSHDIE Make as much racket as you like people. Noise is life and an excess of noise is a sign that life is ... SALMAN RUSHDIE In television, the 60-minute series, 'The Wire' and 'Mad Men' and so on, the writer ... SALMAN RUSHDIE If the creative artist worries if he will still be free tomorrow, then he will not be free today. SALMAN RUSHDIE Hyperrealism can create an atmosphere of surrealism because nobody sees the world in such detail. SALMAN RUSHDIE The difference between memoir and autobiography, as far as I see it, is that a memoir is there prima... SALMAN RUSHDIE In any authoritarian society, the possessor of power dictates, and if you try and step outside, he w... SALMAN RUSHDIE One of the strange things about violent and authoritarian regimes is they don't like the glare o... SALMAN RUSHDIE The response of anybody interested in liberty is that we all have a say and the ability to have an a... SALMAN RUSHDIE Many writers who have had to deal with the subject of atrocity can't face it head-on. SALMAN RUSHDIE Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanat... SALMAN RUSHDIE If you live in free countries, you don't have to spend all your life arguing about freedom becau... SALMAN RUSHDIE What I worry about and don't like is the way in which the ideology of multiculturalism has decli... SALMAN RUSHDIE Sometimes great, banned works defy the censor's description and impose themselves on the world -... SALMAN RUSHDIE The Koran was revealed at a time of great change in the Arab world, the seventh-century shift from a... SALMAN RUSHDIE One of the reasons my name is Rushdie is that my father was an admirer of Ibn Rush'd, the 12th c... SALMAN RUSHDIE At the height of the British Empire very few English novels were written that dealt with British pow... SALMAN RUSHDIE Original thought, original artistic expression is by its very nature questioning, irreverent, iconoc... SALMAN RUSHDIE There are two things in Indian history - one is the incredible optimism and potential of the place, ... SALMAN RUSHDIE The only thing worse than a bad review from the Ayatollah Khomeini would be a good review from the A... SALMAN RUSHDIE I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a b... SALMAN RUSHDIE I'm not a prophet, but I always thought it was natural for dictatorships to fall. I remember in ... SALMAN RUSHDIE But there's one thing we must all be clear about: terrorism is not the pursuit of legitimate goa... SALMAN RUSHDIE I'm a big-city boy. What I like is big cities. It's not just what I like. It's what I wr... SALMAN RUSHDIE Two things form the bedrock of any open society - freedom of expression and rule of law. If you don&... SALMAN RUSHDIE Mahound comes to me for revelation, asking me to choose between monotheist and henotheist alternativ... SALMAN RUSHDIE Don't let the zealots make Muslim a terrifying word." [1,000 Days 'Trapped Inside a Me... SALMAN RUSHDIE Fundamentalism isn't about religion, it's about power. SALMAN RUSHDIE From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable. SALMAN RUSHDIE When...did it become irrational to dislike religion, any religion, even to dislike it vehemently? Wh... SALMAN RUSHDIE Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one. SALMAN RUSHDIE All my adult life, if I didn't have several hours a day to sit in a room by myself, I would get ... SALMAN RUSHDIE Out-of-step intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and the deceased Edward Said have often been dismissed a... SALMAN RUSHDIE American literature has always been immigrant. SALMAN RUSHDIE I've met the Dalai Lama briefly, but I would probably say my grandfather was the wisest person I... SALMAN RUSHDIE Our lives are not what we deserve; they are, let us agree, in many ways deficient. SALMAN RUSHDIE I have had many more close women friends than men, and I've always assumed that comes from the f... SALMAN RUSHDIE Before I came to England, my favorite authors were P. G. Wodehouse and Agatha Christie. I used to de... SALMAN RUSHDIE This is going to make me sound ancient, but I remember Juhu Beach when there weren't any buildin... SALMAN RUSHDIE If Woody Allen were a Muslim, he'd be dead by now. SALMAN RUSHDIE A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in ret... SALMAN RUSHDIE Our lives teach us who we are. SALMAN RUSHDIE Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long. It is for art to capture that ex... SALMAN RUSHDIE How do you defeat terrorism? Don’t be terrorized. SALMAN RUSHDIE A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape... SALMAN RUSHDIE What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second,... SALMAN RUSHDIE If you look at Indian movies, every time they wanted an exotic locale, they would have a dance numbe... SALMAN RUSHDIE I think that we live in a very timid age, and a part of our timidity arises from our unwillingness t... SALMAN RUSHDIE I write books I'd enjoy reading, I'm the reader standing behind my shoulder. SALMAN RUSHDIE It seems that the right of freedom of speech that was enshrined in numerous constitutions is now und... SALMAN RUSHDIE Islam is unusual in that it's the only one of the great world religions which was born inside re... SALMAN RUSHDIE It's Kennedy's war, Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson got all the flak, but it's Kennedy's war... SALMAN RUSHDIE And now, as if to finish things off, the Himalayan winter is setting in, and the greatest calamity o... SALMAN RUSHDIE As a writer, one of the things we all learned from the movies was a kind of compression that didn... SALMAN RUSHDIE What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist SALMAN RUSHDIE Have you noticed the physical resemblance between Imran Khan and Gaddafi? If you were making a movie... SALMAN RUSHDIE Certainly, poverty and economic decline have a lot to do with the so-called rage of Islam. You'v... SALMAN RUSHDIE 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