Salman Rushdie
I do have a lot of time for people in my life, and friendship is a very important subject for me. I think I'm unusual among the writers I know in that respect.Collection: Friendship
A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.Collection: Work
Friendships are the family we make - not the one we inherit. I've always been someone to whom friendship, elective affinities, is as important as family.Collection: Friendship
It is often said by religious people that without its framework, there is no sense of right or wrong. My view is that religion comes after ethics.Collection: Religion
A mature society understands that at the heart of democracy is argument.Collection: Society
An attack upon our ability to tell stories is not just censorship - it is a crime against our nature as human beings.Collection: Nature
Stories in families are colossally important. Every family has stories: some funny, some proud, some embarrassing, some shameful. Knowing them is proof of belonging to the family.Collection: Funny
Vertigo is the conflict between the fear of falling and the desire to fall.Collection: Fear
Two things form the bedrock of any open society - freedom of expression and rule of law. If you don't have those things, you don't have a free country.Collection: Freedom
Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanation, have wrought havoc among mere mixed-up human beings.Collection: History
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.Collection: Religion
I saw Quentin Tarantino's 'Django Unchained,' and you could say a lot of things against it, but it was incredible fun. I don't like blood and gore, and I am very squeamish about violence, but Tarantino's violence is actually funny.Collection: Funny
What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry.Collection: Imagination
Perhaps because my relationship with my father went through such a long, bumpy time, it's been very important for me to work to try to keep lines of communication open between my sons and myself to try to avoid my father's mistakes. At least if you're making mistakes, make different mistakes.Collection: Communication
There are two things in Indian history - one is the incredible optimism and potential of the place, and the other is the betrayal of that potential - for example, corruption. Those two strands intertwine through the whole of Indian history, and maybe not just Indian history.Collection: History
It is literature which for me opened the mysterious and decisive doors of imagination and understanding. To see the way others see. To think the way others think. And above all, to feel.Collection: Imagination
In any authoritarian society, the possessor of power dictates, and if you try and step outside, he will come after you. This is equally true of Sovietism, of China and of Iran, and in our time it has happened a lot in Islam. The point is that it's worse when the authoritarianism is supported by something supernatural.Collection: Power
If terrorism is to be defeated, the world of Islam must take on board the secularist-humanist principles on which the modern is based, and without which Muslim countries' freedom will remain a distant dream.Collection: Freedom
British society has never been cleansed of the filth of imperialism.Collection: Society
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.Collection: Sympathy
What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.Collection: Freedom
When people do the cowardly thing, it's not about respect, it's about fear.Collection: Respect
It's one thing to say, 'I don't like what you said to me and I find it rude and offensive,' but the moment you threaten violence in return, you've taken it to another level, where you lose whatever credibility you had.
You don't that often see writers being sought out when there are matters of great moment to discuss. And I think that's a loss.
I'm definitely post-something.
The suicide bomber's imagination leads him to believe in a brilliant act of heroism, when in fact he is simply blowing himself up pointlessly and taking other people's lives.
In the movies, the writer is just the servant, the employee.
In television, the 60-minute series, 'The Wire' and 'Mad Men' and so on, the writer is the primary creative artist.
We live in a frightened time, and people self-censor all the time and are afraid of going into some subjects because they are worried about violent reactions.
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.'
I think that England made a very big, historical mistake to allow itself to become the kind of terrorist capital of the world.
I have always thought, the secret purpose of the book tour is to make the writer hate the book he's written. And, as a result, drive him to write another book.
The problem of telling contemporary history is that your message gets outdated.
In general, writers shouldn't be killed for what they write, though I can think of exceptions.
I've always prided myself on my discipline as a writer. I do it like a job. I get up in the morning and go to my desk.
If you have children, you worry about the world you're leaving them.
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.
Whenever I write something, I always want to make sure that what I write is defensible.
I am not in the business of suppressing books.
In the real world, immeasurable hurt is caused by terrorists based in Pakistan who attack countries like India.
Speaking as somebody with three sisters and a very largely female Muslim family, there is not a single woman I know in my family or in their friends who would have accepted the wearing of a veil.
I think the veil is a way of taking power away from women.
The West should be tougher on Pakistan. It is trying to play both ends against the middle - to look like the friend of the revolutionaries on the one hand and a friend of the West in the fight against terrorism. It can't be both things.
I'm not saying I am never going to fall in love again, but there is no need to marry.
The only thing worse than a bad review from the Ayatollah Khomeini would be a good review from the Ayatollah Khomeini.
The reason why books endure is because there are enough people who like them. It's the only reason why books last.
I don't read my books, I write them. Once I've finished the many years it usually takes me to write them, I can't bear to read them, because I've spent too long with them already. I'm not advertising them very well, am I?
India is my kid sister.
Rock n' roll was a kid when I was a kid.
Cruelty is not a literary value.