Kinder machen sich Phantasievorstellungen von ihren Vätern, formen sie sich nach ihren kindlichen Bedürfnissen. Die Realität eines Vaters ist eine Last, die nur wenige Söhne zu tragen vermögen.
Salman Rushdie
Related Der Wahnsinn ist nur die Kehrseite der Macht, beide Ungeheuer wurden erschaffen, um einander zu näh... FAWZI MELLAH Sich mit diesem oder jenem zu identifizieren, ist also ein normaler Vorgang. Gefährlich wird es, so... NAVID KERMANI Diese jungen Menschen hatten keine Wünsche, keine Überzeugungen, geschweige denn Ideale, sie streb... JULI ZEH Aber sie halten es für eine Legende!' 'Weil sie es dafür halten wollen. Vielleicht würden si... KAI MEYER Am Anfang merkt man noch nicht viel davon. Man hat eines Tages keine Lust mehr irgendetwas zu tun. N... MICHAEL ENDE Mit zunehmender Industrialisierung hört die Maschine auf, bloßes Werkzeug zu sein, beginnt ein Eig... HEIDE SCHöNEMANN Solange wir Kinder sind, denken wir nur selten an die Zukunft. Diese Unschuld ermöglicht es uns, un... PATRICK ROTHFUSS Jedermann sollte wenigstens soviel Philosophie und schöne Wissenschaften studieren, als nötig ist,... GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG Es ist übrigens ganz leicht, alles kaputt zu machen, wenn man sich mit jemandem wohl fühlt. Man br... FRéDéRIC BEIGBEDER Die Kirche muss erkennen, dass sich die Erde weiter dreht. Nachdem wir es immerhin geschafft haben, ... HELMUT SCHüLLER Die Kunst ist ewig, ihre Formen wandeln sich. (The art is eternal, their shapes are changing.) RUDOLF STEINER Die großartigste Fähigkeit des menschlichen Geistes ist vielleicht die, mit Schmerzen fertig zu we... PATRICK ROTHFUSS Truhe hatte eine ganz einfache Strategie, um mit Dingen fertig zu werden, die sich zwischen ihr und ... TERRY PRATCHETT Er erkundigte sich nach Agnes. Sie sei weggegangen, sagte ich, und er lächelte anzüglich. "Sie geh... PETER STAMM [...] dass es völlig hirnrissig ist, etwas für andere Menschen zu tun, weil man selbst ein Mensch ... JULI ZEH Genau genommen leben sehr wenige Menschen in der Gegenwart. Die meisten bereiten sich darauf vor, de... JONATHAN SWIFT Nein, fair ist das nicht, aber dass die Erde sich wie die Hölle anfühlt, liegt an unserer Erwartun... CHUCK PALAHNIUK Terror - manchmal offen ausgedrückt, doch meistens stillschweigend erkannt - schleicht sich in die ... KATHLEEN BARRY In Homers Ilias scheint Thetis jedenfalls keine Einwände gegen die Beziehung ihres Sohnes Ac... YUVAL NOAH HARARI Wir alle, ob schuldig oder nicht, ob alt oder jung, müssen die Vergangenheit annehmen. Wir alle sin... RICHARD VON WEIZSäCKER Siehst Du, Momo", sagte er, "es ist so: Manchmal hat man eine sehr lange Straße vor sich. Man denkt... MICHAEL ENDE Wenn ich nur ein Telephon habe, der Wald wird sich finden! Ohne Telephon kann man nur ... KARL KRAUS Alle meine gestohlenen Bücher tuschelten nachts miteinander, erzählten die Geschichten ihrer Entf�... CORDULA SIMON Ein Traum ist nichts anderes, als eine mögliche Wirklichkeit, die nur darauf wartet, stattzufinden.... JOHN STRELECKY [D]ie spezielle Müdigkeit, die jeden befällt, der sich anhören muss, was gut und böse, richtig u... JULI ZEH Mit deinen Augen, welche müde kaum von der verbrauchten Schwelle sich befrein, hebst du g... RAINER MARIA RILKE Er bestrich sich Stirn und Brust, unwissend, was er aus seinem Zustande machen sollte, und ein unsä... HEINRICH VON KLEIST Im Jahr 1970 noch protestierten Feministinnen gegen die Vergegenständlichung von Frauen in mondäne... KATHLEEN BARRY Du kannst ihn nicht mehr enttäuschen, er ist nicht mehr da.“ Riley knallte sein Glas auf die... JAYDEN V. REEVES [I]m Internet [ist] Aufmerksamkeit eine echte Ware geworden, die sich bereits im Moment ihrer Entste... SASCHA LOBO Neue Bücher rochen nach Druckerschwärze, nach Leim, nach Erwartungen. Alte Bücher dufteten nach A... KAI MEYER Dabei waren doch gerade Bücher eins der kostbarsten Geschenke auf Erden. Kunstvoll aneinandergereih... CARINA BARTSCH Jahrtausende lang haben die Menschen nicht herausgefunden, was es mit der Liebe auf sich hat. Wie vi... STEPHENIE MEYER Jahrtausende lang haben die Menschen nicht herausgefunden, was es mit der Liebe auf sich hat. Wie vi... STEPHENIE MEYER Selig sind die Vergesslichen: denn sie werden auch mit ihren Dummheiten fertig. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE . Aber sie tatens. ER überlebte länger, aber beide hielten sich lange. Zwei der neuen SF Serien we... STAR TREK Es ist oft kein geringes Zeichen von Humanität, einen Andern nicht beurteilen zu wollen und sich zu... FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE »Ist euch schon mal aufgefallen, dass es keine Dynastie für Mörder, Vergewaltiger oder Diebe gibt... NICOLE GOZDEK Natürlich dauerte es eine Weile, bis alles kompliziert genug wurde, um Gaswolken, Galaxien, Planete... TERRY PRATCHETT Jeder erzählt in seinem eigenen Kopf eine Geschichte über sich. Ununterbrochen. Die ganze Zeit. Un... PATRICK ROTHFUSS Einige Leute« – der kleine Mann blickte skeptisch auf die vorbeiströmende Basismaterie – »ins... TERRY PRATCHETT Die Behauptung, daß Effrom nicht besonders gut kochen konnte, war eine Untertreibung von ähnlichem... CHRISTOPHER MOORE Die Tatsache, dass wahre Schönheit mit Selbstvergessenheit zu tun hatte, passte zum seltsamen Humor... JULI ZEH Der Pragmatismus ersetzt uns alles, was früher die großen Ideen, die Ideologien und Religionen, de... JULI ZEH Das Amt für Desinformation pflegt nur bei schwersten Zusammenstößen von Magierwelt und Muggeln t�... NEWT SCAMANDER Zwischen den Zeilen liest man nur, wenn man weiß, wie es ist, umgeben von Worten und Worten die eig... LILLY LINDNER Ich stellte mir seine Gedanken als einen schnellen, schmalen Wasserstrom vor, der sich durch die Fug... ROBERT HARRIS Geschichten sind die Essenz des Lebens, Apolonia", sagte er, so ernst wie immer, und sie hatte das G... JENNY-MAI NUYEN Meistens herrschte die betäubende Stille von menschlichen Gehirnen, die sich allmählich in Schmelz... TERRY PRATCHETT Aber manchmal sind die ganz großen Momente eben auch die stillen, die man nur mit sich alleine ausm... ADRIANA POPESCU Er macht mir Angst", gestand ich ihr. Sie gab ein Prustton von sich. "Bei mir ist er die Liebe... SAMANTHA YOUNG Agent Tanner sagte, dass die NSA sich etwas einfallen lasseb will. Anselm und Hannah haben sich eben... MARTINA ANDRé Leadership ist dann besonders effektiv, wenn es sich nicht nach Führung anfühlt, sondern nach Frei... CARSTEN K. RATH Aber man lebt nicht ewig in einem Alptraum. Der Mensch hat die Fähigkeit, selbst in den abnormalste... NATASCHA KAMPUSCH auf einem spielplatz im park hat sich ein junges paar auf zwei schaukeln gesetzt und führt ein lang... DAVID RAMIRER Die meisten Lügen sind wahr und spinnen sich von ganz allein, kaum jemand kannte diese Wahrheit bes... CHRISTOPH MARZI Wie wohlhabend, wie einflussreich sie waren, wie sie prosperiert hatten unter einer Regierung, die s... IAN MCEWAN Ich möchte wissen", sagte er vor sich hin, "was eigentlich in einem Buch los ist, solang es zu ist.... MICHAEL ENDE Vielleicht finden es manche schade, dass sie weniger Narben hinterlässt, dass sich weniger Leute an... JOHN GREEN Verstehst du, Frauen sind wie Feuer, wie Flammen. Manche Frauen sind wie Kerzen, hell und freundlich... PATRICK ROTHFUSS Man kann davon überzeugt sein, sich etwas zu wünschen - vielleicht jahrelang - solang man weiß, d... MICHAEL ENDE Die Gesamtheit dieser Produktionsverhältnisse bildet die ökonomische Struktur der Gesellschaft, di... KARL MARX Nahestehende zu überleben erfordert eine besondere Art von Mut, sagte sie leise. KATE MOSSE Ein Greenhorn schleppt der Reinlichkeit wegen einen Waschschwamm von der Größe eines Riesenkürbis... KARL MAY Gifts come from above in their own peculiar forms.
[Ger., Die Gaben
Kommen von oben herab, in ... JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE Wie einer, der auf fremden Meeren fuhr, so bin ich bei den ewig Einheimischen; die vollen ... RAINER MARIA RILKE Anders als die Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika haben sich die meisten europäischen Nationalstaaten ... NAVID KERMANI Everything in the world may be endured, except only a succession
of prosperous days.
[Ger., Alles... JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE Träume und Märchen waren ihr eigentlicher Lebensinhalt, dachte ich jetzt. Deshalb hat sie sich auc... THOMAS BERNHARD Two souls, alas! reside within my breast, and each withdraws
from and repels its brother.
[Ger.,... JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE So sind die Dinge manchmal. Wenn alles am schlimmsten ist, dann wirft der Verstand alles in einen Pa... RICHARD BACHMAN Mädchen kriegen Titten und vergessen, wie klug und mutig sie einmal waren. Auch Jungen haben ihre e... CHUCK PALAHNIUK Man muss die Originalität des eigenen Lebens infrage stellen wenn es sich mit den Zeilen eines Rock... JONATHAN TROPPER Die älteste Sprache, sagt man, sei das Indogermanische, Indo-europäische, das Sanskrit. Aber es is... THOMAS MANN [Es gibt keine Pläne für einen Enterprise Film, aber die Schauspieler glauben auch, dass es nur ei... DOMINIC KEATING Das Leben geht weiter. Manchmal fragte ich mich, ob diese Tatsache nicht das Grausamste an unse... MAX RHODE Wie es im Zeitalter der Könige naiv gewesen wäre zu glauben, dass der erstgeborene Königssohn der... J.M. COETZEE Olaf hielt sich keineswegs für etwas Besonderes; seine Heavy-Metal-Kutte und die schwarzen T-Shirts... JULI ZEH Ich habe sie Erfahrung gemacht, dass die Menschen aus vielen verschiedenen Schichten von Geheimnisse... VERONICA ROTH Liebe ist schwer. Liebhaben von Mensch zu Mensch: das ist vielleicht das Schwerste, was uns aufgegeb... RAINER MARIA RILKE [D]as Denken an sich gilt nicht mehr als Tugend, sondern als Zeitverschwendung. Es wird von speziali... JULI ZEH Sie entsann sich, wie sie an einem heißen Julitag unter dem Baum gesessen hatte an der Seite von je... NICHOLAS SPARKS Unfaßbar das erste Tier, das von einem anderen träumte. Ungeheuerlich das erste Wirbeltier, dem es... CARLOS FUENTES Ohne Bedenken brach er das Versprechen, das er sich selbst gegeben hatte. Derlei Schwüre gelten nur... RICHARD BACH Er entschied, noch einmal die Wahrheit zu sagen. Es war eine völlig neue Taktik für ihn, und viell... TERRY PRATCHETT Die Herren der Information haben die Poesie aus dem Auge verloren, wo Worte eine Bedeutung haben kö... J.M. COETZEE Die Realität in den 1960ern waren total anders. Um zu kommunizieren schrieben wir Briefe auf unsere... STAR TREK Das pädagogische Bedenken: „Darf man Kinder mit dem Hokuspokus afrikanischer Zauberer und böser ... WALTER MEHRING Es gibt kein Vergangenes, daß man zurücksehnen dürfte, es gibt nur ein ewig Neues, daß sich aus ... JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE Wenn die Intelligenten einen schlechten Charakter haben, so zeigt sich das, und wenn sie keinen schl... RICHARD BACHMAN In meinem Krankenzimmer herrschte ein Kommen und Gehen. Ärzte, die Stationsschwester und ihre Schar... KATE MOSSE Nur eine freie Entscheidung ist eine gute Entscheidung. CARSTEN K. RATH Sind sie vorbestraft? Du lieber Himmel ich wußte gar nicht, dass das immer noch nötig ist." Britis... ERIC IDLE Das Ufer des Flusses und der vielen glitzernden Bächlein, die ihm auf allerlei Umwegen zuströmten,... EDGAR ALLAN POE Menschen konnten nichts anderes sein als Menschen. Sie zogen sich Roben an oder Handschellen und tat... JULI ZEH Die Art, wie wir unser Leben verbringen, wie wir existieren, unsere Umgebung, das, was wir jeden Tag... JOHN STRELECKY Lucas beobachtete, wie Helen aus dem Haus rannte und in Claires Wagen sprang. Sie sah erschöpft und... JOSEPHINE ANGELINI Die wertvollste Reise ist die Reise zu unserem Selbst. NINA HRUSA Wir haben alle Angst. Angst zu verlieren, verlassen zu werden und wieder alleine zu sein. Trotzdem m... MARTINA RIEMER Die Hauptfragen im Leben muss man sich selbst beantworten - und beantwortet man sich wirklich selbst... HEINRICH HEINE
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