I admit it: above all things, I fear absurdity.
SALMAN RUSHDIEWhat is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.
More Salman Rushdie Quotes
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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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He knew what he knew: that the real world was full of magic, so magical worlds could easily be real.
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If somebody’s trying to shut you up, sing louder, and if possible, better.
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Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.
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Masks beneath masks until suddenly the bare bloodless skull.
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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.
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It seems that the right of freedom of speech that was enshrined in numerous constitutions is now under attack by religious institutions.
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What kind of Christmas present would Jesus ask Santa for?
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Every time you finish a book, you have a terrible feeling that there’s just never going to be another one. But fortunately, so far, the next one has always shown up.
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One of the strange things about violent and authoritarian regimes is they don’t like the glare of negative publicity.
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I don’t dictate to anyone what to believe and what not to. And I don’t want that to be dictated to me either.
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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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The world, somebody wrote, is the place we prove real by dying in it.
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Stories in families are colossally important. Every family has stories: some funny, some proud, some embarrassing, some shameful. Knowing them is proof of belonging to the family.
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We have come to think of taking offence as a fundamental right. We value very little more highly than our rage, which gives us, in our opinion, the moral high ground. From there we can shoot down at our enemies and inflict heavy fatalities.
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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.
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Only the foolish, blinded by language’s conventions, think of fire as red or gold. Fire is blue at it’s melancholy rim, green in it’s envious heart. It may burn white, or even, in it’s greatest rages, black.
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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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Reality is a question of perspective.
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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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I 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.
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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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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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If you’re offended, it’s your problem.
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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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Something was badly amiss with the spiritual life of the planet, Too many demons inside people claiming to believe in God.
SALMAN RUSHDIE