black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

An attack upon our ability to tell stories is not just censorship – it is a crime against our nature as human beings.

Salman Rushdie

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

Death Place Reality World
Liberate yourself, because no one else is going to liberate you.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Freedom Liberty Yourself
Masks beneath masks until suddenly the bare bloodless skull.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Blood Head Hide Mask
I write books I’d enjoy reading, I’m the reader standing behind my shoulder.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Book Myself Reading Writing
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
One of the things a writer is for is to say the unsayable, speak the unspeakable and ask difficult questions.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Difficult Question Stay Talk Writing
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.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Black Blind Fire Fools Gold Language Thinking
You can find shame in every house, burning in an ashtray, hanging framed upon a wall, covering a bed. But nobody notices it any more.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Bed Frame Hang Home Notice Shame Wall
My horizon’s have shrunk and I have only endings to write.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

End Limitation Myself Restriction Write
Among the great struggles of man-good/evil, reason/unreason, etc.-there is also this mighty conflict between the fantasy of Home and the fantasy of Away, the dream of roots and the mirage of the journey.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Dreams Evil Fantasy Goodness Greatness Home Journey Man
What’s real and what’s true aren’t necessarily the same.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Home Necessary Reality True
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
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.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Combination Freedom Heart Reason Religion Threat Tragedy
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.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Book Essence Fall In Love Growth Leaving Production Reading Strange
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.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Criticism Deserve Fear Religion Respect
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

An attack upon our ability to tell stories is not just censorship – it is a crime against our nature as human beings.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

An attack upon our ability to tell stories is not just censorship – it is a crime against our nature as human beings.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Salman Rushdie Quotes