Salman Rushdie
I used to say, 'There is a God-shaped hole in me.' For a long time I stressed the absence, the hole. Now I find it is the shape which has become more important.
War used to be something you could stand on the nearby hill and watch. Now we have total war; everybody's in it. We have total economics as well. Everything affects everybody. The Malaysian currency shakes, and people around the world are seriously affected.
We all dream things into being; you imagine yourself having a child, and then you have a child. An inventor will think of something in his mind and then make it actual. So things are often passing from the imagined realm into the real world.
What I worry about and don't like is the way in which the ideology of multiculturalism has declined into cultural relativism. I think that's very dangerous. When the Archbishop of Canterbury, for God's sake, says that you can't have one law for everybody... that's stupid.
Thomas Pynchon looks exactly like Thomas Pynchon should look. He is tall, he wears lumberjack shirts and blue jeans. He has Albert Einstein white hair and Bugs Bunny front teeth.
Broad-mindedness is related to tolerance; open-mindedness is the sibling of peace.
A thing that happens to migrants is that they lose many of the traditional things which root identity, which root the self.
The difference between memoir and autobiography, as far as I see it, is that a memoir is there primarily to tell one particular story, whereas an autobiography tries to be a full account of a life.
In this world without quiet corners, there can be no easy escapes from history, from hullabaloo, from terrible, unquiet fuss.
Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.
A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.
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.
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.
When I was writing 'The Satanic Verses,' if you had asked me about the phenomenon that we all now know as radical Islam, I wouldn't have had much to say. As recently as the mid-1980s, it didn't seem to be a big deal.
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.
A purpose of our lives is to broaden what we can understand and say and therefore be.
If the culture shifts, if people think differently about women, the art will shift, too. You can't ask art to make social change. It's not what it's for.
The glamour of being forbidden must not be underestimated.
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.
You can't have modern states based on ideas which have been out of date for a thousand years.
Doubt, it seems to me, is the central condition of a human being in the twentieth century.
The miniatures of the Mughal period are really the pinnacle of Indian artistic achievement. And not a single one of those paintings is done by an individual artist.
'The Satanic Verses' was denied the ordinary life of a novel. It became something smaller and uglier: an insult.
I'm a world expert on superhero comics. I think maybe only Michael Chabon knows more than me.
I didn't want to become some embittered old hack getting his revenge for the rest of my life. And I didn't want to become some scared creature cowering in a corner. I remember telling myself not to carry the hatred around, although I know where it is. I have it in a trunk in storage.
In the '50s, listening to Elvis and others on the radio in Bombay - it didn't feel alien. Noises made by a truck driver from Tupelo, Mississippi, seemed relevant to a middle-class kid growing up on the other side of the world. That has always fascinated me.
Pakistan is alarmed by the rising Indian influence in Afghanistan, and fears that an Afghanistan cleansed of the Taliban would be an Indian client state, thus sandwiching Pakistan between two hostile countries. The paranoia of Pakistan about India's supposed dark machinations should never be underestimated.
When you are writing a book, it feels as if you are simply concentrating on the world of the book and that whatever is happening in your personal life is outside the room, as it were. But maybe that's just the way you have to talk to yourself to make it possible.
Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory.
If I were asked for a one-sentence sound bite on religion, I would say I was against it.
Originality is dangerous.
‘Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.Collection: Inspirational
The only people who see the whole picture,' he murmured, 'are the ones who step out of the frame.Collection: People
Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, to rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.Collection: Thinking
Liberate yourself, because no one else is going to liberate youCollection: Gym Motivational
If somebody's trying to shut you up, sing louder, and if possible, better.Collection: Trying
Religion, a mediaeval 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. 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. 'Respect for religion' has become a code phrase meaning 'fear of religion.' Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.Collection: Religious
Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.Collection: Courage
faith without doubt is addictionCollection: Addiction
What can't be cured must be endured.Collection: Medicine
The moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.Collection: Ideas
I admit it: above all things, I fear absurdity.Collection: Absurdity
Home is the place where you feel happy.Collection: Home
Reality is a question of perspective.Collection: Reality
Peace, perfect peace, in this dark world of sin? The Blood of Jesus whispers peace within.Collection: Jesus
From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.Collection: Men
For every snake, there is a ladder; for every ladder,a snakeCollection: Snakes
Until you know who you are you can’t write.Collection: Writing
How do you defeat terrorism? Don’t be terrorized.Collection: Defeat