Salman Rushdie Quotes (87 Quotes)

Our lives are not what we deserve; they are, let us agree, in many ways deficient.

For the record, there is a French project to make a theatrical adaptation of The Satanic Verses, so maybe that's a start.

The liveliness of literature lies in its exceptionality, in being the individual, idiosyncratic vision of one human being, in which, to our delight and great surprise, we may find our own vision reflected.

Vertigo is the conflict between the fear of falling and the desire to fall.

It is very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it.

Reality is a question of perspective the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems --but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems incredible.

Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long. It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it to, in the case of literature, its readers. . .

antediluvian, who think of homosexuality as ungodly, who have little time for real freedom of expression, who routinely express anti-Semitic views, and who, in the case of the Muslim Diaspora, are -- it has to be said -- in many ways at odds with the cultures among which they live.

Both are responsible. But I know when I write a book it's my name on the book, so I stand or fall by what I sign. And so must she.

Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory.

I used to say, 'There is a God-shaped hole in me.' For a long time I stressed the absence, the hole. Now I find it is the shape which has become more important.

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

One of the strange things that happens when you publish a book is that you begin ... to see what resonances it has for the readers, ... Sometimes you begin to understand your book a bit more.

Your blasphemy, Salman, can't be forgiven. To set your words against the Words of God.

When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy.

Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.

In this world without quiet corners, there can be no easy escapes from history, from hullabaloo, from terrible, unquiet fuss.

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.

What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry.

Always do something impossible right at the beginning of the show. Swallow a sword, tie yourself in a knot, defy gravity. Do what the audience knows it could never do no matter how hard it tries. After that you'll have them eating out of your hand.

Such is the miraculous nature of the future of exiles: what is first uttered in the impotence of an overheated apartment becomes the fate of nations.

Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts.

Rock and roll music - the music of freedom frightens people and unleashes all manner of conservative defense mechanisms.

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

I think it's a stupid way to read a book, ... to say that because something happens to one person the author is trying to suggest that all people are like this. The novel is the art of the particular. And I'm talking about a particular person whose development from innocence to guilt, if you like, is his own particular narrative arc. The point is to make that coherent - not to read the book as some kind of simple allegory, but to read it as a story about a person.

Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanation, have wrought havoc among mere mixed-up human beings.

One of the extraordinary things about human events is that the unthinkable becomes thinkable.

From such defensive, separated worlds some youngsters have indefensibly stepped across a moral line and taken up their lethal rucksacks, ... The deeper alienations that lead to terrorism may have their roots in these young men's objections to events in Iraq or elsewhere, but the closed communities of some traditional Western Muslims are places in which young men's alienations can easily deepen.

Our lives teach us who we are.

Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.

A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.

It was because it was easier to blame me, ... You know, 'Why is he rocking the boat' In those days there was a lot of that stuff. He was asking for it. He did it on purpose. He was begging for it. It was just conventional blaming-the-victim stuff. I don't like the term 'victim' when applied to myself. Certainly I felt the guilt burden had shifted from the people doing the violence to the person on the receiving end of the violence.

Names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like so many of the earth's marvels, beneath the dust of habit.

Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.

I hate admitting that my enemies have a point.

The acceptance that all that is solid has melted into the air, that reality and morality are not givens but imperfect human constructs, is the point from which fiction begins.

Most of what matters in your life takes place in your absence.