Salman Rushdie Quotes
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Doris Lessing really doesn't care what the critics say. In fact, she orders her publishers not to send her the reviews and gets cross with them if they do because she doesn't want that in her head. She's going where she's going, and that's where she wants to go.
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The only way of living in a free society is to feel that you have the right to say and do stuff.
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The field of the novel is very rich. If you're a composer, you're well aware of the history of composition, and you are trying to make your music part of that history. You're not ahistorical. In the same way, I think, if you write now, you are writing in the historical context of what the novel has been and what possibilities it has revealed.
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It is very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it.
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I only met Margaret Thatcher twice. The thing that I thought about meeting her was how extraordinarily intelligent she was. You really had to be on your game; otherwise, she'd make mincemeat of you.
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The publishing of a book is a worldwide event. The attempt to suppress a book is a worldwide event.
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Broad-mindedness is related to tolerance; open-mindedness is the sibling of peace.
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Vertigo is the conflict between the fear of falling and the desire to fall.
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If you live in free countries, you don't have to spend all your life arguing about freedom because it is all around you. It seems redundant to make a lot of noise about something when, in fact, there it is. But if someone tries to remove it, it becomes important for you to formulate your own defenses of it.
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When 'Midnight's Children' came out, people in the West tended to respond to the fantasy elements in the novel, to praise it in those terms. In India, people read it like a history book.
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Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanation, have wrought havoc among mere mixed-up human beings.
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I don't think people cry reading 'Midnight's Children,' but a lot of people seem to cry watching the movie.
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I used to say, 'There is a God-shaped hole in me.' For a long time I stressed the absence, the hole. Now I find it is the shape which has become more important.
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An attack upon our ability to tell stories is not just censorship - it is a crime against our nature as human beings.
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I think that England made a very big, historical mistake to allow itself to become the kind of terrorist capital of the world.
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The West sees Iran as an important force in the gulf.
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Perhaps because my relationship with my father went through such a long, bumpy time, it's been very important for me to work to try to keep lines of communication open between my sons and myself to try to avoid my father's mistakes. At least if you're making mistakes, make different mistakes.
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Children are the vessels into which adults pour their poison.
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The reason why books endure is because there are enough people who like them. It's the only reason why books last.
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Many men start being friendly with women because they are trying to seduce them. I'm not trying to seduce them. I just like hanging out with them.
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People are always telling me that they've seen people reading my books on the subway, or the beach, or whenever.
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Two things form the bedrock of any open society - freedom of expression and rule of law. If you don't have those things, you don't have a free country.
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The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas - uncertainty, progress, change - into crimes.
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Airport security exists to guard us against terrorist attacks.