black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Until you know who you are you can’t write.

Salman Rushdie

What I do think is evident is that those countries in the world where Islamic extremism has recovered the most power, those are also the countries which are most disliked.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Country Evidence Hate Power Recover Thinking World
The moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Criticism Freedom Ideas Impossible Moments Thinking
The world, somebody wrote, is the place we prove real by dying in it.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Death Place Reality World
Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Ability Courage Language Talk Thinking True
Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Freedom Game Life Talk
Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another’s, were no longer our own, individual, discrete.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Live Ourselves Story
It is very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Book Easy Yourself
Even when things are at their worst, there’s a little voice in your head saying, ‘Good story!’
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Goodness Head Story Voice Worst
We all owe death a life.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Death Life One Liner
It matters, it always matters, to name rubbish as rubbish; that to do otherwise is to legitimize it.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Legal Name
Until you know who you are you can’t write.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Writing Yourself
No, I don’t think it’s fair to label Islam ‘violent.’ But I will say that to my knowledge, no writer has ever gone into hiding for criticizing the Amish.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Criticism Hide Knowledge Thinking Violence Writing
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 and of the heart.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Exploration Heart Human Imagination Literature Place Society Spirit Truth
Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Criticism Deserve Fear Religion Respect
If you actually want to change your world, there is a better way of doing it than blowing yourself up.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Better Change Way World Yourself
Friendships are the family we make – not the one we inherit. I’ve always been someone to whom friendship, elective affinities, is as important as family.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Family Friendship Important Inheritance Myself

Until you know who you are you can’t write.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Until you know who you are you can’t write.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Salman Rushdie Quotes