Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another’s, were no longer our own, individual, discrete.
SALMAN RUSHDIEOur lives, our stories, flowed into one another’s, were no longer our own, individual, discrete.
SALMAN RUSHDIEFree speech is not just free speech for people you admire. It’s also for people who you think of as reprehensible.
SALMAN RUSHDIEThe lessons one learns at school are not always the ones the school thinks it’s teaching.
SALMAN RUSHDIEI stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire.
SALMAN RUSHDIEThe only people who see the whole picture,’ he murmured, ‘are the ones who step out of the frame.
SALMAN RUSHDIEThose who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, to rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.
SALMAN RUSHDIEHe knew what he knew: that the real world was full of magic, so magical worlds could easily be real.
SALMAN RUSHDIESomething was badly amiss with the spiritual life of the planet, Too many demons inside people claiming to believe in God.
SALMAN RUSHDIEOf course, there is nothing intrinsic linking any religion with any act of violence. The crusades don’t prove that Christianity was violent. The Inquisition doesn’t prove that Christianity tortures people. But that Christianity did torture people.
SALMAN RUSHDIELiterature is the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear voices talking about everything in every possible way.
SALMAN RUSHDIEAmong the great struggles of man-good/evil, reason/unreason, etc.-there is also this mighty conflict between the fantasy of Home and the fantasy of Away, the dream of roots and the mirage of the journey.
SALMAN RUSHDIEReligion is responsible for a lot of the problems in the history of the world and it’s not something that I practice or recommend, but to each his own.
SALMAN RUSHDIEMy horizon’s have shrunk and I have only endings to write.
SALMAN RUSHDIEThe moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.
SALMAN RUSHDIEI have always thought that these two ways of talking, one is the fantastic, the fable, the fairy tale, and the other being history, the scholarly study of what happened, I think they’re both amazing ways to understand human nature.
SALMAN RUSHDIEIt is very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it.
SALMAN RUSHDIE