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.
SALMAN RUSHDIEIf you’re offended, it’s your problem.
More Salman Rushdie Quotes
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Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today.
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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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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.
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I write books I’d enjoy reading, I’m the reader standing behind my shoulder.
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Masks beneath masks until suddenly the bare bloodless skull.
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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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What kind of Christmas present would Jesus ask Santa for?
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Faith without doubt is addiction.
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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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Once you put a thought into the world, it can be disagreed with, but it can’t be unthought.
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Even when things are at their worst, there’s a little voice in your head saying, ‘Good story!’
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In the cookie of life, friends are the chocolate chips.
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If you actually want to change your world, there is a better way of doing it than blowing yourself up.
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I didn’t become a writer to write about me.
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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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The lessons one learns at school are not always the ones the school thinks it’s teaching.
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If somebody’s trying to shut you up, sing louder, and if possible, better.
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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.
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Between the adored and the adorer falls the shadow.
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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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Too many people spouting too many words, and in the end those words will turn to bullets and stones.
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Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.
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I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire.
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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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You can’t have modern states based on ideas which have been out of date for a thousand years.
SALMAN RUSHDIE