Salman Rushdie Quotes - Page 6

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• I've never seen anywhere in the world as beautiful as Kashmir. It has something to do with the fact that the valley is very small and the mountains are very big, so you have this miniature countryside surrounded by the Himalayas, and it's just spectacular. And it's true, the people are very beautiful too.

  Salman Rushdie

  Beautiful, People, Mountain

  "Salman Rushdie, The Art of Fiction No. 186". Interviewed with Jack Livings, The Paris Review, Issue 174, www.theparisreview.org. Summer 2005.

  177 Copy quote

• My parents gave me the gift of irreligion, of growing up without bothering to ask people what gods they held dear, assuming that in fact, like my parents, they weren't interested in gods, and that this uninterest was 'normal.' You may argue that the gift was a poisoned chalice, but even if so, that's a cup from which I'd happily drink again.

  Salman Rushdie

  Growing Up, People, Parent

  4 Copy quote

• But there's one thing we must all be clear about: terrorism is not the pursuit of legitimate goals by some sort of illegitimate means. Whatever the murderers may be trying to achieve, creating a better world certainly isn't one of their goals. Instead they are out to murder innocent people.

  Salman Rushdie

  Mean, Creating, People

  "Terror Is Glamour". "Spiegel" Interview, www.spiegel.de. August 28, 2006.

  7 Copy quote

• Memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else's version more than his own.

  Salman Rushdie

  Memories, Reality, Special

  Salman Rushdie (2010). “Midnight's Children”, p.292, Random House

  11 Copy quote

• I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity.

  Salman Rushdie

  Art, Charlie Hebdo, Stupidity

  "Charlie Hebdo magazine attack: vigils held as French hunt suspects – as it happened". www.theguardian.com. January 7, 2015.

  16 Copy quote

• We have come to think of taking offence as a fundamental right. We value very little more highly than our rage, which gives us, in our opinion, the moral high ground. From there we can shoot down at our enemies and inflict heavy fatalities.

  Salman Rushdie

  Thinking, Moral High Ground, Giving

  "Raging from the moral highground" by Ian Sansom, www.theguardian.com. August 11, 2000.

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Salman Rushdie

  Country, Rights, Giving

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

  7 Copy quote

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

  Salman Rushdie

  World, Want, Way

  7 Copy quote

• Ideas are interesting to me, and religions are a place where ideas have been very subtly embodied for thousands of years. All literature started as sacred literature.

  Salman Rushdie

  Ideas, Years, Interesting

  7 Copy quote

• I only met Margaret Thatcher twice. The thing that I thought about meeting her was how extraordinarily intelligent she was. You really had to be on your game otherwise she'd make mincemeat of you.

  Salman Rushdie

  Intelligent, Games, Mets

  "The Bookers' favourite". Interview with Andrew Anthony, www.theguardian.com. April 5, 2008.

  4 Copy quote

• What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist. Without the freedom to challenge, even to satirize all orthodoxies, it ceases to exist. Language and the imagination cannot be imprisoned, or art will die, and with it, a little of what makes us human.

  Salman Rushdie

  Art, Expression, Imagination

  Salman Rushdie (1990). “In good faith”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

  4 Copy quote

• In writing 'The Satanic Verses,' I think I was writing for the first time from the whole of myself. The English part, the Indian part. The part of me that loves London, and the part that longs for Bombay. And at my typewriter, alone, I could indulge this.

  Salman Rushdie

  Writing, Thinking, Typewriters

  9 Copy quote

• I'm not a prophet, but I always thought it was natural for dictatorships to fall. I remember in 1989, two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, had you said it was going to happen no one would have believed you. The system seemed powerful and unbreakable. Suddenly overnight it blew away like dust.

  Salman Rushdie

  Wall, Powerful, Fall

  24 Copy quote

• In an ideal world, you could reunite the Pakistan-occupied part of Kashmir with the Indian-occupied part and restore the old borders. You could have both India and Pakistan agreeing to guarantee those borders, demilitarise the area, and to invest in it economically. In a sane world that would happen, but we don't live in a sane world.

  Salman Rushdie

  India And Pakistan, Kashmir, Borders

  185 Copy quote

• What 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 Rushdie

  Country, Islamic, Thinking

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

  8 Copy quote

• But love is what we want, not freedom. Who then is the unluckier man? The beloved, who is given his heart's desire and must for ever after fear its loss, or the free man, with his unlooked-for liberty, naked and alone between the captive armies of the earth?

  Salman Rushdie

  Heart, Loss, Army

  Salman Rushdie (2000). “The Ground Beneath Her Feet: A Novel”, p.53, Macmillan

  10 Copy quote

• we look up and we hope the stars look down, we pray that there may be stars for us to follow, stars moving across the heavens and leading us to our destiny, but it's only our vanity. We look at the galaxy and fall in love, but the universe cares less about us than we do about it, and the stars stay in their courses however much we may wish upon them to do otherwise. It's true that if you watch the sky-wheel turn for a while you'll see a meteor fall, flame and die. That's not a star worth following; it's just an unlucky rock. Our fates are here on earth. There are no guiding stars.

  Salman Rushdie

  Falling In Love, Stars, Moving

  Salman Rushdie (1995). “The Moor's last sigh”

  10 Copy quote

• All art began as sacred art, you know? I mean, all painting began as religious painting. All writing began as religious writing.

  Salman Rushdie

  Religious, Art, Writing

  6 Copy quote

• There needs to be a thorough examination, by Muslims everywhere, of why it is that the faith they love breeds so many violent mutant strains.

  Salman Rushdie

  Examination, Mutants, Needs

  "Let's get back to life" by Salman Rushdie, www.theguardian.com. October 5, 2001.

  5 Copy quote

• Only the foolish, blinded by language's conventions, think of fire as red or gold. Fire is blue at it's melancholy rim, green in it's envious heart. It may burn white, or even, in it's greatest rages, black.

  Salman Rushdie

  Heart, Thinking, Fire

  8 Copy quote

• We live in an age where the rate of change has been colossal. Colossal. Almost every week there's some transformation of some kind, whether technological or political or scientific, whatever. And I think it's bewildering to human beings to live in a time when they can't take anything as fixed - when everything is shifting and changing all the time.

  Salman Rushdie

  Thinking, Political, Age

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

  10 Copy quote

• You 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 Rushdie

  Wall, House, Bed

  9 Copy quote

• It seems that the right of freedom of speech that was enshrined in numerous constitutions is now under attack by religious institutions.

  Salman Rushdie

  Religious, Freedom Of Speech, Constitution

  7 Copy quote

• To be born again,' sang Gibreal Farishta tumbling from the heaveans, 'first you have to die. Ho ji! Ho ji! To land upon the bosomy earth, first one needs to fly Tat-taa! Takatun! How to ever smile again, if first you won't cry? How to win the darling's love mister, without a sigh?

  Salman Rushdie

  Winning, Land, Needs

  8 Copy quote

• Among the great struggles of man-good/evil, reason/unreason, etc.-there is also this mighty conflict between the fantasy of Home and the fantasy of Away, the dream of roots and the mirage of the journey.

  Salman Rushdie

  Dream, Struggle, Home

  Salman Rushdie (2000). “The Ground Beneath Her Feet: A Novel”, p.55, Macmillan

  11 Copy quote

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