Salman Rushdie Quotes
-
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.
-
I've always prided myself on my discipline as a writer. I do it like a job. I get up in the morning and go to my desk.
-
When you have children, your perspective on the parent-child relationship alters.
-
I'm not a very big fan of 'Slumdog Millionaire.' I think it's visually brilliant. But I have problems with the story line. I find the storyline unconvincing.
-
Original thought, original artistic expression is by its very nature questioning, irreverent, iconoclastic.
-
Rock n' roll was a kid when I was a kid.
-
Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts.
-
I accept there are people out there who don't like me. I don't like them.
-
There is no such thing as perfect security, only varying levels of insecurity.
-
Many writers who have had to deal with the subject of atrocity can't face it head-on.
-
If bigots behave like bigots, it's not a huge surprise.
-
Free societies are societies in motion, and with motion comes friction.
-
All art began as sacred art, you know? I mean, all painting began as religious painting. All writing began as religious writing.
-
Mo Yan is the Chinese equivalent of the Soviet Russian apparatchik writer Mikhail Sholokhov: a patsy of the regime.
-
Our lives are not what we deserve; they are, let us agree, in many ways deficient.
-
It is very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it.
-
Hyperrealism can create an atmosphere of surrealism because nobody sees the world in such detail.
-
If there were Israeli attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities, it makes it certain there would be a reprisal attack against the United States at some point.
-
I'm no friend of Tony Blair's and I consider the Middle East policies of the United States and the UK fatal.
-
Look at history. It's not the account of a species at peace.
-
What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.
-
There are two things in Indian history - one is the incredible optimism and potential of the place, and the other is the betrayal of that potential - for example, corruption. Those two strands intertwine through the whole of Indian history, and maybe not just Indian history.
-
If Woody Allen were a Muslim, he'd be dead by now.
-
There is no right in the world not to be offended. That right simply doesn’t exist. In a free society, an open society, people have strong opinions, and these opinions very often clash. In a democracy, we have to learn to deal with this. And this is true about novels, it’s true about cartoons, it’s true about all these products.