Salman Rushdie Quotes
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Islam is unusual in that it's the only one of the great world religions which was born inside recorded history. That there's an enormous amount of factual historical record about the life of a prophet and about social conditions in Arabia at that time. So it's possible to look at the origin of Islam in a scholarly way.
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Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts.
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In Iran, fundamentalism was fuelled to an extent by the regime of the Shah being supported by the West.
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The response of anybody interested in liberty is that we all have a say and the ability to have an argument is exactly what liberty is, even though it may never be resolved. In any authoritarian society the possessor of power dictates, and if you try and step outside he will come after you.
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The gamble of literature is that I make the best work I can; the most truthful, the most representative of how I see things. I try and do that, and then I put it out there and say to you, 'What do you think?' I hope that you think well of it, obviously.
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Writers have an opinion about the world and offer arguments about the world. They should offer contemplation.
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If you look at Indian movies, every time they wanted an exotic locale, they would have a dance number in Kashmir. Kashmir was India's fairyland. Indians went there because in a hot country you go to a cold place. People would be entranced by the sight of snow.
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At the height of the British Empire very few English novels were written that dealt with British power. It's extraordinary that at the moment in which England was the global superpower the subject of British power appeared not to interest most writers.
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When I was writing 'The Satanic Verses,' if you had asked me about the phenomenon that we all now know as radical Islam, I wouldn't have had much to say. As recently as the mid-1980s, it didn't seem to be a big deal.
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Writers shouldn't have lives that are interesting. It gets in the way of your work.
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I am certainly not a good Muslim. But I am able now to say that I am Muslim; in fact it is a source of happiness to say that I am now inside, and a part of the community whose values have always been closest to my heart.
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Out-of-step intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and the deceased Edward Said have often been dismissed as crazy extremists, 'anti-American,' and in Mr. Said's case even, absurdly, as apologists for Palestinian 'terrorism.'
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Dissensions between Muslim nations run at least as deep, if not deeper, than those nations' resentment of the West.
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Our lives are not what we deserve; they are, let us agree, in many ways deficient.
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I'm a world expert on superhero comics. I think maybe only Michael Chabon knows more than me.
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The mistake of the West was to put the Sauds on the throne of Saudi Arabia and give them control of the world's oil fortune, which they then used to propagate Wahhabi Islam.
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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.
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A novel, I think, is partly about the contemporary and partly about the eternal, and it's the balance of that that's difficult to achieve.
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Nothing is unfilmable.
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Pakistan is alarmed by the rising Indian influence in Afghanistan, and fears that an Afghanistan cleansed of the Taliban would be an Indian client state, thus sandwiching Pakistan between two hostile countries. The paranoia of Pakistan about India's supposed dark machinations should never be underestimated.
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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.
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Children like being a little scared, but they don't want to be disturbed.
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Chekhov is this poet of melancholy and isolation and of wishing you were somewhere else than where you are.
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The West was involved in toppling the Mossadegh government. That ultimately led to the Iranian revolution.