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Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart.

Salman Rushdie

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

Legal Name
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.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Act Link People Religion Terrorism Torture Violence
I write books I’d enjoy reading, I’m the reader standing behind my shoulder.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Book Myself Reading Writing
Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Freedom Game Life Talk
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
I think if we wish to live in any kind of a moral universe, we must hold the perpetrators of violence responsible for the violence they perpetrate. It’s very simple. The criminal is responsible for the crime.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Crime Kind Moral Responsible Simplicity Thinking Universe Violence
Until you know who you are you can’t write.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Writing 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
Too many people spouting too many words, and in the end those words will turn to bullets and stones.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

End People Weapon Word
I’ve been worrying about God a little bit lately. It seems like he’s been in a bad mood. And I think it has to do with the quality of lovers he’s been getting.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Bad God Himself Lover Mood Quality Worry
I didn’t become a writer to write about me.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Myself Writing
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
Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, to rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Change Domination Live Power Story Thinking Time True
I admit it: above all things, I fear absurdity.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Fear Mad Myself Weird
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.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Fairy Tale Fantasy Human Myself Talk Thinking Understand Way
Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another’s, were no longer our own, individual, discrete.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Live Ourselves Story

Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart.

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Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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