Art Quotes by Salman Rushdie

“Honesty is not the best policy in life. Only, perhaps, in art.”

— Salman Rushdie

“The art of the cinema,’ Truffaut allegedly said, ‘is to point the camera at a beautiful woman.”

— Salman Rushdie

In the experience of art, time seems not to exist.

— Salman Rushdie

I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire

— Salman Rushdie

If the creative artist worries if he will still be free tomorrow, then he will not be free today.

— Salman Rushdie

The time-honored role of the artist [is] to speak truth to power.

— Salman Rushdie

The miniatures of the Mughal period are really the pinnacle of Indian artistic achievement. And not a single one of those paintings…

— Salman Rushdie

What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry.

— Salman Rushdie

It's true that the human body is more vulnerable than the products of the human mind. We need to protect artists and…

— Salman Rushdie

I believe in the art of literature, I believe in freedom of the imagination, I believe in the kind of liberties that…

— Salman Rushdie

“An image has a shape and so does sound and so does montage and so does drama. The film sense is that…

— Salman Rushdie

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

— Salman Rushdie

I think it's a very important function of art to challenge accepted reality, especially when that reality is created by powerful interest…

— Salman Rushdie

Original thought, original artistic expression is by its very nature questioning, irreverent, iconoclastic.

— Salman Rushdie

Self-censorship is a lie to yourself; if you are going to be trying to seriously create art, to create literary art, and…

— Salman Rushdie

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist. Without the freedom to challenge, even to satirize…

— Salman Rushdie

Five mysteries hold the keys to the unseen: the act of love, and the birth of a baby, and the contemplation of…

— Salman Rushdie

What I've always seen in writers and artists is the courage it takes to make an original work of art. I think…

— Salman Rushdie

“Unfortunately life has a way of sidetracking one’s greatest ambitions. Painters, would-be artists, end up whitewashing walls. Sculptors are forced to design…

— Salman Rushdie

“the art of the novel revealed anything, it was that human nature was the great constant, in any culture, in any place,…

— Salman Rushdie

“Robert Hughes, Time magazines's art critic, told him on the phone that after he saw the planes flying over SoHo he had…

— Salman Rushdie

Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long. It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it…

— Salman Rushdie

“Faced with the blazing magnificence of the everyday, the artist is both humbled and provoked. There are photographs now of events on…

— Salman Rushdie

In our time, we have become too interested in the artist and his or her character and experience as a way of…

— Salman Rushdie

I had become a kind of information magpie, gathering to myself all manner of shiny scraps of fact and hokum and books…

— Salman Rushdie

Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has…

— Salman Rushdie

Vulnerability of artists is definitely what makes organizations like PEN necessary because, as I tried to argue, the actual work that writers…

— Salman Rushdie

I have a general feeling that writers and artists who are in this peculiar situation, of being a persecuted artist, all anyone…

— Salman Rushdie

I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for…

— Salman Rushdie

In television, the 60-minute series, 'The Wire' and 'Mad Men' and so on, the writer is the primary creative artist.

— Salman Rushdie

In the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the nonbelongers, the different ones, the…

— Salman Rushdie

If the culture shifts, if people think differently about women, the art will shift, too. You can't ask art to make social…

— Salman Rushdie

In the experience of art, time seems not to exist. When I'm writing and think, "I've been working for two hours," I've…

— Salman Rushdie

The real risks for any artist are taken in pushing the work to the limits of what is possible, in the attempt…

— Salman Rushdie