Salman Rushdie
When...did it become irrational to dislike religion, any religion, even to dislike it vehemently? When did reason get redescribed as unreason? When were the fairy stories of the superstitious placed above criticism, beyond satire? A religion was not a race. It was an idea, and ideas stood (or fell) because they were strong enough (or too weak) to withstand criticism, not because they were shielded from it. Strong ideas welcomed dissent.Collection: Strong
I have never really thought of myself as a writer about religion. And I think one of the things that happened to me as a result of all that is that I think it did for some people, many people, obscure the kind of writer that I actually am.Collection: Thinking
Science fiction is always a vehicle for ideas. It's the form which allows either movies or books to be an exploration of how we should live.Collection: Book
Between the adored and the adorer falls the shadow.Collection: Fall
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.Collection: Growing Up
To understand just one life you have to swallow the world ... do you wonder, then, that I was a heavy child?Collection: Life
We were language's magpies by nature, stealing whatever sounded bright and shiny.Collection: Language
Something was badly amiss with the spiritual life of the planet...Too many demons inside people claiming to believe in God.Collection: Spiritual
Bread and books: food for the body and food for the soul – what could be more worthy of our respect, and even love?Collection: Book
When you know what you’re against you have taken the first step to discovering what you’re for.Collection: Firsts
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: Country
What’s real and what’s true aren’t necessarily the same.Collection: Real
That’s the trouble with you sad-city types: a place has to be miserable and dull as ditchwater before you believe it’s real.Collection: Real
I beat my sons in real-life table tennis, but virtually, I get murdered. I download games on the iPhone that I’m addicted to – I’m a master at “Angry Birds.”Collection: Real
Every time you finish a book, you have a terrible feeling that there’s just never going to be another one. But fortunately, so far, the next one has always shown up.Collection: Book
Religion, a medieval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today.Collection: Real
He knew what he knew: that the real world was full of magic, so magical worlds could easily be real.Collection: Real
I don’t think people cry reading ‘Midnight’s Children,’ but a lot of people seem to cry watching the movie.Collection: Reading
An attack upon our ability to tell stories is not just censorship – it is a crime against our nature as human beings.Collection: Stories
The whole story of migration and what that has done in interconnecting the planet is obviously something I’ve written about a lot.Collection: Stories
This is how we are: we fall in love with each other’s strengths, but love deepens towards permanence when we fall in love with each other’s weaknesses.Collection: Romance
What happened in Pakistan was that people were told: You’re all Muslim, so now you’re a country. As we saw in 1971 with the Bangladesh secession, the answer to that was: ‘Oh no, we’re not.’Collection: Country
There is no magic on earth strong enough to wipe out the legacies of one’s parents.Collection: Strong
As human knowledge has grown, it has also become plain that every religious story ever told about how we got here is quite simply wrong. This, finally, is what all religions have in common. They didn’t get it right.Collection: Stories
Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another’s, were no longer our own, individual, discrete.Collection: Stories
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: Fun
I’m not a very big fan of ‘Slumdog Millionaire.’ I think it’s visually brilliant. But I have problems with the story line. I find the storyline unconvincing.Collection: Stories
I grew up reading ‘The Jungle Books’ and loving them.Collection: Book
A book is not completed till it’s read.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Reading
It’s so disappointing, to put it mildly, that people know so much about my life. Because it means that they’re always trying to look at my books in terms of my life.Collection: Book
I don’t like books that play to the gallery, but I’ve become more concerned with telling a story as clearly and engagingly as I can.Collection: Book
I write books I’d enjoy reading, I’m the reader standing behind my shoulder.Collection: Book
You start at the stupid end of the book, and if you’re lucky you finish at the smart end.Collection: Book
People are always telling me that they’ve seen people reading my books on the subway, or the beach, or whenever.Collection: Book
What I’ve always seen in writers and artists is the courage it takes to make an original work of art. I think the real risks in literature are linguistic and intellectual, and I hope we can highlight those, as well as political courage.Collection: Real
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.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Book
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?Collection: Book
I always thought the front line was the bookstores. And bookstores around America, around the world did astonishingly well. They held the line. They didn’t chicken out. You know, they defended the book. They kept it in the front of the store.Collection: Book
Sometimes when you finish a book, you don’t know quite what you’ve got.Collection: Book
I’m not a big fan of there being voiceovers in movies. I really prefer it when the film tells it story.Collection: Stories
It’s always been colossally important to me that my books should be well received in India. It’s where I come from.Collection: Book
I think people direct good films when they feel personal to them, not because it’s a famous book or something. It has to something move over that and somehow become personal to the director.Collection: Book
You want all your books to stick around after you’ve gone.Collection: Book