Salman Rushdie Quotes
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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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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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England in a way is lucky. It's an island, so the frontiers are given by the sea.
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It's so disappointing, to put it mildly, that people know so much about my life. Because it means that they're always trying to look at my books in terms of my life.
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But there's one thing we must all be clear about: terrorism is not the pursuit of legitimate goals by some sort of illegitimate means. Whatever the murderers may be trying to achieve, creating a better world certainly isn't one of their goals. Instead they are out to murder innocent people.
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The responsibility for violence lies with those who perpetrate it.
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Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.
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One of the things I've learnt is not to depend on there being a woman in your life to make it work. I love my work, I love my children, I've got wonderful friends, you know, I have a nice life.
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I don't read my books, I write them. Once I've finished the many years it usually takes me to write them, I can't bear to read them, because I've spent too long with them already. I'm not advertising them very well, am I?
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Someone asked me if I was afraid to write my memoirs. I told him: 'We have to stop drawing up accounts of fear! We live in a society in which people are allowed to tell their story, and that is what I do.'
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The Muslim population in India is, largely speaking, not radicalised. From the beginning, they were always very secular-minded.
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You can't have modern states based on ideas which have been out of date for a thousand years.
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The frustrating part of being tagged 'controversial' is people go looking for trouble where there isn't any to look for.
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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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I think, in a written novel, the way in which you play with the readers' emotion or the way in which you engage the readers' emotions can be very indirect. You could come at it through irony or comedy, etcetera, and you could capture people's sympathies and feelings kind of by stealth if you like.
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I would argue that religion comes from a desire to get to the questions of, 'Where do we come from?' and 'How shall we live?' And I would say I don't need religion to answer those questions.
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I do have a lot of time for people in my life, and friendship is a very important subject for me. I think I'm unusual among the writers I know in that respect.
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I remember when I was young, many cities in the Muslim world were cosmopolitan cities with a lot of culture.
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There is nothing intrinsic linking any religion with any act of violence. The crusades don't prove that Christianity was violent. The Inquisition doesn't prove that Christianity tortures people. But that Christianity did torture people.
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Human beings, you see, do absolutely two primary things. We see like and unlike. Like becomes, in literature, simile and metaphor. Unlike becomes uniqueness and difference, from which I believe, the novel is born.
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The Republicans were not always insane. They might've had politics I didn't agree with, but they weren't always actually certifiable.
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I do not need the idea of God to explain the world I live in.
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I did a lot of student acting when I was young.
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The difference between memoir and autobiography, as far as I see it, is that a memoir is there primarily to tell one particular story, whereas an autobiography tries to be a full account of a life.