Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.
SALMAN RUSHDIEFree speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.
SALMAN RUSHDIEWe were language’s magpies by nature, stealing whatever sounded bright and shiny.
SALMAN RUSHDIEWhen 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 RUSHDIESelf-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.
SALMAN RUSHDIEHe knew what he knew: that the real world was full of magic, so magical worlds could easily be real.
SALMAN RUSHDIEIn the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the nonbelongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks.
SALMAN RUSHDIEThe lessons one learns at school are not always the ones the school thinks it’s teaching.
SALMAN RUSHDIEToo many people spouting too many words, and in the end those words will turn to bullets and stones.
SALMAN RUSHDIEWhat 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.
SALMAN RUSHDIEThe only people who see the whole picture,’ he murmured, ‘are the ones who step out of the frame.
SALMAN RUSHDIEWe cannot allow religious hooligans to place limiting points on thought.
SALMAN RUSHDIEIf 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 RUSHDIEWe all owe death a life.
SALMAN RUSHDIEYou 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 RUSHDIEIt matters, it always matters, to name rubbish as rubbish; that to do otherwise is to legitimize it.
SALMAN RUSHDIEStories in families are colossally important. Every family has stories: some funny, some proud, some embarrassing, some shameful. Knowing them is proof of belonging to the family.
SALMAN RUSHDIE