Salman Rushdie Quotes
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Anyone who reads my work will see that there are often difficult relationships between fathers and sons.
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Actually, I don't even like parties. I would much prefer a room with four friends who sit around and have dinner. I detest nightclubs. And I don't like places where the noise is so loud you can't talk to people.
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You don't fight radical conservatism with not-quite-so radical conservatism.
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I don't like books that seem to want to teach me things. Which is not to say that one doesn't learn from books – but you do your own learning in your own way.
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I was very happy in Bombay. I was good at school. There was no reason to change anything. I suppose it must have been some spirit of adventure, of wanting to see the world.
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In a novel, if you're any good, you don't just have good people or bad people. You have complicated people. You have real people.
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It's one thing to say, 'I don't like what you said to me and I find it rude and offensive,' but the moment you threaten violence in return, you've taken it to another level, where you lose whatever credibility you had.
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What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry.
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Originality is dangerous.
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Whenever I write something, I always want to make sure that what I write is defensible.
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It is literature which for me opened the mysterious and decisive doors of imagination and understanding. To see the way others see. To think the way others think. And above all, to feel.
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Rohinton Mistry's celebrated novel 'Such a Long Journey' was pulled off the syllabus of Mumbai University because local extremists objected to its content.
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England in a way is lucky. It's an island, so the frontiers are given by the sea.
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If the creative artist worries if he will still be free tomorrow, then he will not be free today.
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You don't that often see writers being sought out when there are matters of great moment to discuss. And I think that's a loss.
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I am clearly vulnerable to these more passionate and volatile unstable relationships. I am trying to not be so vulnerable.
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It matters, it always matters, to name rubbish as rubbish … to do otherwise is to legitimize it.
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The whole story of migration and what that has done in interconnecting the planet is obviously something I've written about a lot.
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Most American writers don't get asked their opinion on current affairs, whereas in Europe and England, we still do. There are writers here who are the most sophisticated commentators, but they're not asked. Like Don DeLillo, who sort of forecast most of the modern world before it happened.
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Anyone who has had the experience of going through American security checks knows the purpose of these checks is not to make you safer; it's just to annoy you.
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It seems that the right of freedom of speech that was enshrined in numerous constitutions is now under attack by religious institutions.
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The great concern is that year after year, rising numbers of journalists are being killed in pursuit of their work. They are increasingly seen as not being neutral but rather as combatants by one side or the other.
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I do think of Bombay as my hometown. Those are the streets I walked when I was learning to walk. And it's the place that my imagination has returned to more than anywhere else.
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The First Amendment defends all forms of speech including hate speech, which is why groups like Ku Klux Klan are allowed to utter their poisonous remarks.