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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

“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

“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

“When I am writing novels I don't read a lot of novels so I try to catch up in-between.”

Writing Trying Novel

Author:Salman Rushdie

“I want to write novels. I want to write stories. I want to do the stuff that I became a writer to do.”

Want Writing Stories Stuff Novel

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

“The only position when violence is threatened in response to a novel or a cartoon or a crappy YouTube video is a no-surrender position. This is how we live. We live in a country in which we have these rights, and we're not going to give them up. Full stop. The end.”

Giving Ends Country Novel Rights Violence Position Response Surrender Video Threatened Cartoon Youtube

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

“A novel, I think, is partly about the contemporary and partly about the eternal, and it's the balance of that that's difficult to achieve.”

Thinking Difficult Novel Achieve Balance Eternal Contemporary

Author:Salman Rushdie

“I have been a film buff all my life and believe that the finest cinema is fully the equal of the best novels.”

Believe Has Beens Film Novel Equal Cinema Finest

Author:Salman Rushdie

“I've never yet managed to write a novel which didn't have an Indian central character.”

Writing Character Novel Indian

Author:Salman Rushdie

“One of the things I've thought about 'Midnight's Children' is that it is a novel which puts a Muslim family at the centre of the Indian experience.”

Children Novel Indian Centre Midnight Muslim Family

Author:Salman Rushdie

“Sometimes writing a novel is not unlike having a baby. You'd have to ask a female novelist to compare the pain.”

Writing Sometimes Pain Asks Novel Baby Female Compare Novelists Having A Baby

Author:Salman Rushdie

“'The Satanic Verses' was denied the ordinary life of a novel. It became something smaller and uglier: an insult.”

Novel Ordinary Insult Denied Verses Ordinary Life Satanic Satanic Verses

Book:Joseph Anton

Source: Joseph Anton

“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

“At the height of the British Empire very few English novels were written that dealt with British power. It's extraordinary that at the moment in which England was the global superpower the subject of British power appeared not to interest most writers.”

Moments Interest Novel Written Subjects England Extraordinary British Height Empires Superpower British Empire

Author:Salman Rushdie

“Human beings, you see, do absolutely two primary things. We see like and unlike. Like becomes, in literature, simile and metaphor. Unlike becomes uniqueness and difference, from which I believe, the novel is born.”

Believe Humans Two Literature I Believe Born Differences Human Beings Novel Metaphor Primaries Uniqueness Simile

Author:Salman Rushdie

“I think, in a written novel, the way in which you play with the readers' emotion or the way in which you engage the readers' emotions can be very indirect. You could come at it through irony or comedy, etcetera, and you could capture people's sympathies and feelings kind of by stealth if you like.”

People Ifs Thinking Way Kind Play Feelings Emotion Novel Comedy Written Reader Irony Capture Indirect Stealth Etcetera

Author:Salman Rushdie

“If I had simply wanted to trade on an insult to Islam, I could have done it in a sentence rather than writing a 250,000-word novel, a work of fiction.”

Ifs Writing Done Wanted Fiction Novel Trade Islam Sentences Insult

Author:Salman Rushdie

“Matthew Wiener on Mad Men writes the entire series before they start shooting, and if you have that, then what you can do with character and story is not at all unlike what you can do in a novel.”

Ifs Men Writing Character Stories Can Do Novel Mad Series Shooting Matthew Mad Men

Author:Salman Rushdie

“My first novel - the novel I wrote before 'Midnight's Children' - feels, to me, now, very - I mean, I get embarrassed when I see people reading it. You know, there are some people who, bizarrely, like it. Which I'm, you know, I'm happy for.”

People Knows Feels Firsts Mean Children Reading Novel Embarrassed Midnight

Author:Salman Rushdie

“Rohinton Mistry's celebrated novel 'Such a Long Journey' was pulled off the syllabus of Mumbai University because local extremists objected to its content.”

Long Novel Journey University Locals Extremist Long Journey Mumbai Syllabus

Author:Salman Rushdie

“The field of the novel is very rich. If you're a composer, you're well aware of the history of composition, and you are trying to make your music part of that history. You're not ahistorical. In the same way, I think, if you write now, you are writing in the historical context of what the novel has been and what possibilities it has revealed.”

Ifs Thinking Way Writing Trying Wells Has Beens Novel Rich Fields Possibility Historical Composer Composition Historical Context

Author:Salman Rushdie

“When 'Midnight's Children' came out, people in the West tended to respond to the fantasy elements in the novel, to praise it in those terms. In India, people read it like a history book.”

People Children Book Term Fantasy Novel Elements India Praise West Midnight History Books

Author:Salman Rushdie

“The novel does not seek to establish a privileged language but it insists upon the freedom to portray and analyze the struggle between the different contestants for such privileges.”

Doe Different Language Freedom Novel Struggle Privilege Privileged Contestants

Book:Is nothing sacred?

Source: Is nothing sacred?

About the Author

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

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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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