Salman Rushdie Quotes
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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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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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It is often said by religious people that without its framework, there is no sense of right or wrong. My view is that religion comes after ethics.
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Children like being a little scared, but they don't want to be disturbed.
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Cruelty is not a literary value.
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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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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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I have been a film buff all my life and believe that the finest cinema is fully the equal of the best novels.
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Writers shouldn't have lives that are interesting. It gets in the way of your work.
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You can take the boy out of Bombay; you can't take Bombay out of the boy, you know.
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A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.
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Writers have been in terrible situations and have yet managed to produce extraordinary work.
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Nothing is unfilmable.
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Speaking as somebody with three sisters and a very largely female Muslim family, there is not a single woman I know in my family or in their friends who would have accepted the wearing of a veil.
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As a writer, one of the things we all learned from the movies was a kind of compression that didn't exist before people were used to watching films. For instance, if you wanted to write a flashback in a novel, you once had to really contextualize it a lot, to set it up. Now, readers know exactly what you're doing. Close-ups, too.
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When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy.
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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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The thing that always attracted me to New York was the sense of being in a place where a lot of people had a lot of stories not unlike mine. Everybody comes from somewhere else. Everyone's got a Polish grandmother, some kind of metamorphosis in their family circumstances. That's a very big thing - the experience of not living where you started.
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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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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 Satanic Verses' was denied the ordinary life of a novel. It became something smaller and uglier: an insult.
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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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One of the strange things about violent and authoritarian regimes is they don't like the glare of negative publicity.
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When people do the cowardly thing, it's not about respect, it's about fear.