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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.

Salman Rushdie

Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another’s, were no longer our own, individual, discrete.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Live Ourselves Story
The moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Criticism Freedom Ideas Impossible Moments Thinking
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.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Achievement Creation Goal Innocence Legal Murder People Pursuit Terrorism
It matters, it always matters, to name rubbish as rubbish; that to do otherwise is to legitimize it.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Legal Name
Free speech is not just free speech for people you admire. It’s also for people who you think of as reprehensible.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Freedom People Talk Thinking Voice
You can’t have modern states based on ideas which have been out of date for a thousand years.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Ideas Modern Old Time Yourself
If you actually want to change your world, there is a better way of doing it than blowing yourself up.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Better Change Way World Yourself
One of the strange things about violent and authoritarian regimes is they don’t like the glare of negative publicity.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Negative Public Strange Violence
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.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Bad Defense Freedom People Principle Yourself
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.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Evil Existence Expression Goodness History Ideas People Understand
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 RUSHDIE

Believe Direction Myself
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.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

History Kind Man Problem Religion Responsible
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.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Head Literature Place Possible Secret Society Talk Voice Way
If you’re offended, it’s your problem.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Offense Problem Yourself
We were language’s magpies by nature, stealing whatever sounded bright and shiny.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Bright Language Shine Sound Steal Theft
Where there is no belief, there is no blasphemy.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Belief One Liner

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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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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Popular Authors

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