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.
SALMAN RUSHDIEIt is very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it.
More Salman Rushdie Quotes
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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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Religion 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.
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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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Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another’s, were no longer our own, individual, discrete.
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I admit it: above all things, I fear absurdity.
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For every snake, there is a ladder; for every ladder, a snake.
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What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.
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I didn’t become a writer to write about me.
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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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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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What one writer can make in the solitude of one room is something no power can easily destroy.
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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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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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He knew what he knew: that the real world was full of magic, so magical worlds could easily be real.
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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.
SALMAN RUSHDIE