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1. black
2. grey
3. blue
4. red
5. brown
6. white

It matters, it always matters, to name rubbish as rubbish; that to do otherwise is to legitimize it.

Salman Rushdie

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More Salman Rushdie Quotes

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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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• 

  Between the adored and the adorer falls the shadow.

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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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• 

  The only people who see the whole picture,’ he murmured, ‘are the ones who step out of the frame.

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• 

  The world, somebody wrote, is the place we prove real by dying in it.

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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 write books I’d enjoy reading, I’m the reader standing behind my shoulder.

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• 

  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.

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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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• 

  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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• 

  What one writer can make in the solitude of one room is something no power can easily destroy.

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• 

  What I do think is evident is that those countries in the world where Islamic extremism has recovered the most power, those are also the countries which are most disliked.

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• 

  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.

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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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• 

  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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• 

  What kind of Christmas present would Jesus ask Santa for?

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