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If the creative artist worries if he will still be free tomorrow, then he will not be free today.
Salman Rushdie -
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.
Salman Rushdie
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A relationship with an imaginary woman is preferable to a relationship with a real one.
Salman Rushdie -
It is a funny view of the world that a book can cause riots.
Salman Rushdie -
It seems that the right of freedom of speech that was enshrined in numerous constitutions is now under attack by religious institutions.
Salman Rushdie -
The frustrating part of being tagged 'controversial' is people go looking for trouble where there isn't any to look for.
Salman Rushdie -
We cannot allow religious hooligans to place limiting points on thought.
Salman Rushdie -
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.
Salman Rushdie
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I remember when I was young, many cities in the Muslim world were cosmopolitan cities with a lot of culture.
Salman Rushdie -
I did a lot of student acting when I was young.
Salman Rushdie -
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.
Salman Rushdie -
Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.
Salman Rushdie -
Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination of the heart.
Salman Rushdie -
Rohinton Mistry's celebrated novel 'Such a Long Journey' was pulled off the syllabus of Mumbai University because local extremists objected to its content.
Salman Rushdie
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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.
Salman Rushdie -
My grandmother was very fierce and gruff. She was quite small, but she was very wide.
Salman Rushdie -
The world, somebody wrote, is the place we prove real by dying in it.
Salman Rushdie -
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.
Salman Rushdie -
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.
Salman Rushdie -
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.'
Salman Rushdie
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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.
Salman Rushdie -
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.
Salman Rushdie -
There's a lot of conflict and darkness inside everybody's family. We all pretend to outsiders that it's not so, but behind locked doors, there are usually high emotions running.
Salman Rushdie -
I have had many more close women friends than men, and I've always assumed that comes from the fact that in my family there was such a disproportionate female element.
Salman Rushdie