Those 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 RUSHDIETwo 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.
More Salman Rushdie Quotes
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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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To understand just one life you have to swallow the world do you wonder, then, that I was a heavy child?
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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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What kind of Christmas present would Jesus ask Santa for?
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Until you know who you are you can’t write.
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It matters, it always matters, to name rubbish as rubbish; that to do otherwise is to legitimize it.
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I have never really thought of myself as a writer about religion. And I think one of the things that happened to me as a result of all that is that I think it did for some people, many people, obscure the kind of writer that I actually am.
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The world, somebody wrote, is the place we prove real by dying in it.
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If you take a look at history, you will find that the understanding of what is good and evil has always existed before the individual religions. The religions were only invented by people afterwards, in order to express this idea.
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I’ve been worrying about God a little bit lately. It seems like he’s been in a bad mood. And I think it has to do with the quality of lovers he’s been getting.
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The moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.
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Ignorantly is how we all fall in love; for it is a kind of fall. Closing our eyes, we leap from that cliff in hope of a soft landing. Nor is it always soft; but still, without that leap nobody comes to life.
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We were language’s magpies by nature, stealing whatever sounded bright and shiny.
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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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I write books I’d enjoy reading, I’m the reader standing behind my shoulder.
SALMAN RUSHDIE