Salman Rushdie Quotes
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I used to write a monthly column for the 'New York Times' syndicate. But I stopped because I found it really hard to have one extreme opinion a month. I don't know how these columnists have two or three ideas a week; I was having difficulty having 12 things to say a year.
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I'm definitely post-something.
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The writers of the French enlightenment had deliberately used blasphemy as a weapon, refusing to accept the power of the Church to set limiting points on thought.
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The West should be tougher on Pakistan. It is trying to play both ends against the middle - to look like the friend of the revolutionaries on the one hand and a friend of the West in the fight against terrorism. It can't be both things.
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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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If you're offended, it's your problem.
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If you have children, you worry about the world you're leaving them.
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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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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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I'm not saying I am never going to fall in love again, but there is no need to marry.
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If I were asked for a one-sentence sound bite on religion, I would say I was against it.
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Killing people because you don't like their ideas - it's a bad thing.
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The question I'm always asking myself is: are we masters or victims? Do we make history, or does history make us? Do we shape the world, or are we just shaped by it? The question of do we have agency in our lives or whether we are just passive victims of events is, I think, a great question, and one that I have always tried to ask.
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The world is a very abnormal place.
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We live in a frightened time, and people self-censor all the time and are afraid of going into some subjects because they are worried about violent reactions.
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Censorship is the thing that stops you doing what you want to do, and what writers want to talk about is what they do, not what stops them doing it.
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Rock and roll music - the music of freedom frightens people and unleashes all manner of conservative defense mechanisms.
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Nobody wants to read a 600 page book in which the author is fabulous throughout.
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American literature has always been immigrant.
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The world is always terrible.
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Many of us didn't believe in the image of bin Laden as a wandering Old Man of the Mountains, living on plants and insects in an inhospitable cave somewhere on the porous Pakistan-Afghan border.
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Sometimes I think that when people become famous, there's a public perception that they are not human beings any more. They don't have feelings; they don't get hurt; you can act and say as you like about them.
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Look at history. It's not the account of a species at peace.
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If my child had prejudice in his head, I'd be ashamed. I would see it as my failure as a parent.