Quotessence
Home / Authors / Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie Quotes

Novelist

Filter quotes by topic

AllPeopleIfsWorldThinkingWritingBookStoriesKnowsWayHumansKindTryingMenIslamNovelWantArtIdeasChildrenBelieve

Famous Salman Rushdie Quotes

“...The lesson [comic books] taught children- or this child, at any rate- was perhaps the unintentionally radical truth that exceptionality was the greatest and most heroic of values; that those who were unlike the crowd were to be treasured the most lovingly; and that this exceptionality was a treasure so great that it had to be concealed, in ordinary life, beneath what the comic books called a 'secret identity'.”

ChildrenBookValuesSecretIdentityTaughtLessonsOrdinaryRateCrowdsTreasureRadicalComicHeroicComic BookConcealedOrdinary LifeTreasuredSecret Identity
Author:Salman Rushdie
Create image

“I thought, you know, I would probably not have seen that. On the other hand, he's obviously completely telling the truth. So, then what is that? That's - I wanted to explore that. And then I wanted to talk about how ideas are born. And the big question that the book asks in a number of ways about a number of things is that. How does a new idea come into the world?”

KnowsWorldWayDoeBookIdeasHandsBigsWantedAsksBornNumbersTelling The TruthNew IdeasBig Questions
Author:Salman Rushdie
Create image

“This was an age before e-books. We all knew that the only way you can allow a book to survive in print in the long term is in paperback. The hardback has a certain life, and then it stops having that. It stops selling, and if you want the book to just stay around there has to be a paperback edition. So if there were not a paperback edition the book would eventually disappear from the shelves, and we would have lost the battle.”

IfsWayWantLongBookAgeCertainLostTermBattleDisappearSellingLong TermPrintShelves
Author:Salman Rushdie
Create image

“In our time, we have become too interested in the artist and his or her character and experience as a way of understanding art. In my view, you should be able to read a book or see a film without knowing a single thing about conditions or circumstances or character of the artist, and experience the work to the full without such information. Sometimes I feel - speaking for myself - that people know much too much about me, and I wish people knew less and could just read these books and respond to them purely as words on a page.”

PeopleArtBookSometimesCharacterFilmArtistWishUnderstandingCircumstances
Author:Salman Rushdie
Create image

“I had become a kind of information magpie, gathering to myself all manner of shiny scraps of fact and hokum and books and art-history and politics and music and film, and developing, too, a certain skill in manipulating and arranging these pitiful shards so that they glittered and caught the light. Fool's gold, or priceless nuggets mined from my singular childhood's rich bohemian seam? I leave it to others to decide.”

KindArtBookFactsLightFilmCertainRichChildhoodInformationFoolSkillsGoldCaughtDevelopingGatheringPricelessScrapPitifulArt HistoryArrangingBohemianNuggetsMagpies
Book:The Moor's last sigh
Create image

“A book is a product of a pact with the Devil that inverts the Faustian contract, he'd told Allie. Dr Faustus sacrificed eternity in return for two dozen years of power; the writer agrees to the ruination of his life, and gains (but only if he's lucky) maybe not eternity, but posterity, at least. Either way (this was Jumpy's point) it's the Devil who wins.”

IfsWayYearsTwoBookWinningProductsReturnLuckyDevilGainsEternityAgreeContractsDozenDrsPosterityPactFaustusInvert
Book:The Satanic Verses
Create image