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Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie Quotes

Novelist

Salman Rushdie (born June 19, 1947) is a British-Indian novelist and essayist. Known for his magical realism style, his novel Midnight's Children won the Booker Prize in 1981. His works often explore themes of cultural conflict, religion, and politics. In 1988, his novel The Satanic Verses sparked global controversy, leading to a fatwa issued by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini calling for his assassination. Rushdie spent years in hiding under police protection. He remains a prominent voice in contemporary English literature, celebrated for his literary innovation and defense of free expression.

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Famous Salman Rushdie Quotes

“If you listen to the urban speech patterns there you'll find it's quite characteristic that a sentence will begin in one language, go through a second language and end in a third. It's the very playful, very natural result of juggling languages. You are always reaching for the most appropriate phrase.”

Ifs Ends Language Natural Results Speech Thirds India Patterns Sentences Phrases Characteristics Reaching Appropriate Urban Juggling

Author:Salman Rushdie

“If Islam is to be reconciled with modernity, these voices must be encouraged until they swell into a roar.”

Ifs Order Speak Voice Atheism Modern Islam Positive Atheism Spheres Modernity Restoration Be Encouraged Nettles

Author:Salman Rushdie

“To respect Louis Farrakhan, we must understand, is simply to agree with him... If dissent is now also to be thought of as a form of 'dissing,' then we have indeed succumbed to the thought police.”

Ifs Form Religion Police Agree Dissent Thought Police Dissing

Book:Step Across This Line

Source: Step Across This Line

“I think the business of writing a great deal of it is the business of paying attention to your characters, to the world they live in, to the story you have to tell, but just a kind of deep attention and out of that if you pay attention properly the story will tell you what it needs.”

Ifs Thinking World Needs Writing Kind Character Stories Deals Pay Attention Pay Attention

Author:Salman Rushdie

“One of the strange things about violent and authoritarian regimes is they don't like the glare of negative publicity. If you can make them sufficiently uncomfortable, they frequently respond by doing what you need them to do in the spirit of setting people free or ceasing arrests.”

People Ifs Needs Spirit Strange Negative Violent Setting Settings Uncomfortable Regimes Publicity Strange Things Glare

Author:Salman Rushdie

“What I found interesting writing a screenplay as opposed to writing a novel is not the obvious thing, which is having to pare everything down and find the kind of essence, the skeleton if you like, which can then be fleshed out by performance and cinematography.”

Ifs Writing Kind Found Interesting Novel Essence Performances Down And Obvious Screenplays Skeletons Cinematography Obvious Things

Author:Salman Rushdie

“When you're writing for the screen, you have to be hyper-conscious every moment of how the audience is going to react. If you write just one scene where the audience is confused or it breaks their concentration in some way, then you've lost them, and you might never get them back.”

Ifs Way Writing Moments Might Lost Break Audience Scene Conscious Screens Confused Just One Concentration Hyper

Author:Salman Rushdie

“Reading is a very different thing than performing. In fact, one of the things I think that doesn't work in books on tape is if the person doing the reading "acts" too much; it becomes irritating to you listening to it.”

Ifs Thinking Persons Book Different Facts Reading Too Much Listening Performing Different Things Tape Irritating

Author:Salman Rushdie

“If there is a choice between absolute safety and freedom, then freedom must always prevail.”

Ifs Choices Absolutes Safety

Author:Salman Rushdie

“I discovered that if you find the language to talk to younger readers, children can accept anything.”

Ifs Children Language Accepting Reader

Author:Salman Rushdie

“I grew up falling in love with kind of story, amazing, wonder tale of the East, which if you're a child growing up in India is all around you.And I think one of the gifts it gave me as a writer was this early knowledge that stories are not true.”

Ifs Thinking Kind Children Stories Fall Wonder Growing Up Growing Grew Grew Up India Falling In Love East Tales Children Growing Up Growing Children

Author:Salman Rushdie

“You start at the stupid end of the book, and if you're lucky you finish at the smart end.”

Ifs Book Ends Stupid Lucky Smart Lucky You

Author:Salman Rushdie

“The act of migration puts into crisis everything about the migrating individual or group, everything about identity and selfhood and culture and belief. So if this is a novel about migration it must be that act of putting in question. It must perform the crisis it describes.”

Ifs Culture Individual Belief Novel Groups Identity Crisis Migration

Author:Salman Rushdie

“Why speak if you can't manage perfect thoughts, perfect sentences?”

Ifs Speak Perfect Sentences Manage Closure

Book:The Satanic Verses

Source: The Satanic Verses

“thought I was doing two things. One is inquiring into the phenomenon of revelation, if you are not a religious person. But, clearly, it's a sincere phenomenon.”

Ifs Persons Two Religious Two Things Revelations Phenomenon Sincere Inquiring Religious Person

Author:Salman Rushdie

“If you were standing next to the prophet on the mountain, would you have seen the archangel? And my answer to that was probably not, even though it's supposed to be a really big archangel. He describes it as - the Archangel Gabriel as standing on the horizon and filling the sky. That's a big angel.”

Ifs Bigs Next Answers Sky Mountain Angel Standing Supposed To Be Prophet Horizon Filling Gabriel Archangel

Author:Salman Rushdie

“YouTube is full of pieces of trash. If you want to look on YouTube and find something that insults you, you can probably find it.”

Ifs Want Looks Pieces Insult Trash Youtube Insults You

Author:Salman Rushdie

“If you want to be a serious writer, then you have to write what there is to write about. If you're going to pull your punches and second-guess yourself and not do things because you're worried, then don't write. Stay home and do something else.”

Ifs Want Writing Home Serious Worried

Author:Salman Rushdie

“If you're going to write a memoir, try to be as honest and open as you can.”

Ifs Writing Trying Honest Memoir

Author:Salman Rushdie

“If you want to draw people into the story, you really have to write as if you're writing a novel and make these actually-existing people, including the actually-existing person with my name, into a believable person on the page. And that requires distance. That requires not being right up against the events you're talking about.”

People Ifs Want Writing Persons Stories Names Talking Novel Events Pages Draws Distance Including Believable

Author:Salman Rushdie

“One of the characteristics of mudslinging is that mud sticks if it's thrown with enough force for long enough.”

Ifs Long Enough Force Sticks Characteristics Thrown Mud

Author:Salman Rushdie

“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.”

Ifs Way Want Long Book Age Certain Lost Term Battle Disappear Selling Long Term Print Shelves

Author:Salman Rushdie

“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.”

People Ifs Wells Use Can Do Principles Kings Speech Bad Things Free Speech Luther Ku Klux Klan

Author:Salman Rushdie

“Very often in free speech cases you find yourself defending material that you personally detest, because of course it's no trick to defend the free speech of people you either agree with or who don't particularly upset you. It's when people really upset you that you discover if you believe in free speech or not.”

People Ifs Believe Courses Cases Materials Speech Agree Tricks Upset Finding Yourself Free Speech If You Believe Detest

Author:Salman Rushdie

“It seems to me it's perfectly possible to vehemently disagree with a piece of work and to say that it's offensive and insulting and so on and so on. And you're absolutely entitled to do that and to speak back, if you like, against that piece of speech with all the vehemence at your disposal. I mean, that's legitimate. Even other things. People have a right to demonstrate.”

People Ifs Mean Seems Speak Pieces Speech Disagree Entitled Offensive Insulting Vehemence

Author:Salman Rushdie

“You can't assume if you do something contentious that people will be on your side. The moment violence enters the story, the story changes. Then the question is, "How do you face up to violence?" And then you have to have a no-compromise position. And this is quite simply a lesson we learn in the school playground.”

People Ifs Moments Stories School Faces Sides Violence Position Lessons Assuming Compromise Your Side Playgrounds No Compromise Contentious

Author:Salman Rushdie

“If you give in to the threat of violence, if you give in to bullying, what you know is that there will be more bullying. There will not be less bullying. If you appease the bully, you make sure that he will bully you some more. Not less. It doesn't solve the problem. It makes the problem worse.”

Ifs Knows Giving Problem Violence Threat Solve Bullying Bully Appease

Author:Salman Rushdie

“It doesn't matter whether characters are real people or not; if they're not vivid on the page, then the reader doesn't care about them that much, and, if the reader doesn't care about them that much, then they don't care what happens to them.”

People Ifs Real Matter Character Happens Care Reader Pages Don't Care Vivid

Author:Salman Rushdie

“A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.”

Ifs World Writing Book Reading Return Reader Drink Offers Versions Beer Reading Books Book Reading Books And Reading Book Readers This Is A Book Inspiring Book

Book:In good faith

Source: In good faith

“If Woody Allen were a Muslim, he'd be dead by now.”

Ifs Atheism Positive Atheism Woody

Author:Salman Rushdie

“If my child had prejudice in his head, I'd be ashamed. I would see it as my failure as a parent.”

Ifs Children Parent Prejudice My Children Ashamed

Author:Salman Rushdie

“If you're offended, it's your problem.”

Ifs Problem Offended

Author:Salman Rushdie

“In a novel, if you're any good, you don't just have good people or bad people. You have complicated people. You have real people.”

People Ifs Real Novel Complicated Good People Bad People

Author:Salman Rushdie

“All my adult life, if I didn't have several hours a day to sit in a room by myself, I would get antsy and irritable.”

Ifs Hours Rooms Adults

Author:Salman Rushdie

“Dissensions between Muslim nations run at least as deep, if not deeper, than those nations' resentment of the West.”

Ifs Running Nations West Deeper Resentment Dissension

Author:Salman Rushdie

“If bigots behave like bigots, it's not a huge surprise.”

Ifs Huge Surprise Behave Bigots

Author:Salman Rushdie

“If I were asked for a one-sentence sound bite on religion, I would say I was against it.”

Ifs Religion Sound Sentences Bites One Sentence Sound Bites

Author:Salman Rushdie

“If the creative artist worries if he will still be free tomorrow, then he will not be free today.”

Ifs Stills Today Artist Worry Creative Tomorrow Creative Artists

Author:Salman Rushdie

“If Turkey wants to join Europe, it will have to become a European country, and that might take a long time.”

Ifs Want Long Country Might Long Time Europe Turkeys European Countries

Author:Salman Rushdie

“If you actually want to change your world, there is a better way of doing it than blowing yourself up.”

Ifs World Way Want Better Ways

Author:Salman Rushdie

“If you have children you worry about the world you're leaving them.”

Ifs World Children Worry Leaving

Author:Salman Rushdie

“The Christian Coalition is still about Christianity, even if it's an idea of Christianity that many Christians might not go along with.”

Ifs Stills Ideas Might Christian Christianity Coalitions

Author:Salman Rushdie

“The accidents of my life have given me the ability to make stories in which different parts of the world are brought together, sometimes harmoniously, sometimes in conflict, and sometimes both - usually both. The difficulty in these stories is that if you write about everywhere you can end up writing about nowhere.”

Ifs World Writing Different Ends Sometimes Stories Together Given Ability Conflict Difficulty Accidents

Author:Salman Rushdie

“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.”

Ifs Thinking Kind Universe Wish Simple Moral Violence Crime Responsible Criminals Perpetrators

Author:Salman Rushdie

“If 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.”

People Ifs Looks Ideas Order Evil Individual Understanding Good And Evil

Author:Salman Rushdie

“Someone asked me if I was afraid to write my memoirs. I told him: 'We have to stop drawing up accounts of fear! We live in a society in which people are allowed to tell their story, and that is what I do.'”

People Ifs Writing Stories Accounts Drawing Memoir

Author:Salman Rushdie

“As a writer, one of the things we all learned from the movies was a kind of compression that didn't exist before people were used to watching films. For instance, if you wanted to write a flashback in a novel, you once had to really contextualize it a lot, to set it up. Now, readers know exactly what you're doing. Close-ups, too.”

People Ifs Knows Writing Kind Wanted Film Used Novel Reader Instance Flashback Compression

Author:Salman Rushdie

“Doris Lessing really doesn't care what the critics say. In fact, she orders her publishers not to send her the reviews and gets cross with them if they do because she doesn't want that in her head. She's going where she's going, and that's where she wants to go.”

Ifs Want Facts Care Order Crosses Critics Reviews Publishers Dori

Author:Salman Rushdie

“Have you noticed the physical resemblance between Imran Khan and Gaddafi? If you were making a movie of the life of Gaddafi and you wanted a slightly better-looking version of Gaddafi, you might cast Imran Khan.”

Ifs Might Wanted Casts Versions Resemblance Gaddafi

Author:Salman Rushdie

“I can walk into a bookshop and point out a number of books that I find very unattractive in what they say. But it doesn't occur to me to burn the bookshop down. If you don't like a book, read another book. If you start reading a book and you decide you don't like it, nobody is telling you to finish it.”

Ifs I Can Book Reading Walks Numbers Unattractive Bookshops

Author:Salman Rushdie

About the Author

Born: June 19, 1947
Known for: Novelist
Quotes: 808

Related Topics

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Popular Topics

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Books & Sources

The Satanic VersesRelated source material

Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight NightsRelated source material

The Ground Beneath Her Feet: A NovelRelated source material

QuichotteRelated source material

Haroun and the Sea of StoriesRelated source material

The Enchantress of FlorenceRelated source material

Midnight's ChildrenRelated source material

Midnight’s ChildrenRelated source material

In good faithRelated source material

Knife: Meditations After an Attempted MurderRelated source material

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