A poet’s work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.
SALMAN RUSHDIENo, 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.
More Salman Rushdie Quotes
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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 -
Self-censorship is a lie to yourself; if you are going to be trying to seriously create art, to create literary art, and you decide to hold back, to censor yourself, then you are a fool to yourself and it would be better that you kept your mouth shut and did not speak.
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But there’s one thing we must all be clear about: terrorism is not the pursuit of legitimate goals by some sort of illegitimate means. Whatever the murderers may be trying to achieve, creating a better world certainly isn’t one of their goals. Instead they are out to murder innocent people.
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Among 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.
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The only people who see the whole picture,’ he murmured, ‘are the ones who step out of the frame.
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One of the things a writer is for is to say the unsayable, speak the unspeakable and ask difficult questions.
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I think if we wish to live in any kind of a moral universe, we must hold the perpetrators of violence responsible for the violence they perpetrate. It’s very simple. The criminal is responsible for the crime.
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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.
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People can do bad things with free speech as well as good. You have to defend the Ku Klux Klan as well as Martin Luther King. It’s like that. If you’re going to defend the principle, then you have to defend people who use the principle badly.
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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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We all owe death a life.
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Liberate yourself, because no one else is going to liberate you.
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Until you know who you are you can’t write.
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Of 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.
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I didn’t become a writer to write about me.
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When a reader falls in love with a book, it leaves its essence inside him, like radioactive fallout in an arable field, and after that there are certain crops that will no longer grow in him, while other, stranger, more fantastic growths may occasionally be produced.
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Literature 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.
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Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.
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I admit it: above all things, I fear absurdity.
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Free speech is not just free speech for people you admire. It’s also for people who you think of as reprehensible.
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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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We are the storytelling animal.
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If somebody’s trying to shut you up, sing louder, and if possible, better.
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Science fiction is always a vehicle for ideas. It’s the form which allows either movies or books to be an exploration of how we should live.
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Once you put a thought into the world, it can be disagreed with, but it can’t be unthought.
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We were language’s magpies by nature, stealing whatever sounded bright and shiny.
SALMAN RUSHDIE