Ifs Quotes by Salman Rushdie

I discovered that if you find the language to talk to younger readers, children can accept anything.

— Salman Rushdie

If Islam is to be reconciled with modernity, these voices must be encouraged until they swell into a roar.

— Salman Rushdie

Why speak if you can't manage perfect thoughts, perfect sentences?

— Salman Rushdie

YouTube is full of pieces of trash. If you want to look on YouTube and find something that insults you, you can…

— Salman Rushdie

One of the characteristics of mudslinging is that mud sticks if it's thrown with enough force for long enough.

— Salman Rushdie

You start at the stupid end of the book, and if you're lucky you finish at the smart end.

— Salman Rushdie

If you're going to write a memoir, try to be as honest and open as you can.

— Salman Rushdie

If there is a choice between absolute safety and freedom, then freedom must always prevail.

— Salman Rushdie

What I found interesting writing a screenplay as opposed to writing a novel is not the obvious thing, which is having to…

— Salman Rushdie

People can do bad things with free speech as well as good. You have to defend the Ku Klux Klan as well…

— Salman Rushdie

I grew up falling in love with kind of story, amazing, wonder tale of the East, which if you're a child growing…

— Salman Rushdie

If you want to be a serious writer, then you have to write what there is to write about. If you're going…

— Salman Rushdie

If you want to tell the untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got to find a…

— Salman Rushdie

To respect Louis Farrakhan, we must understand, is simply to agree with him... If dissent is now also to be thought of…

— Salman Rushdie

It doesn't matter whether characters are real people or not; if they're not vivid on the page, then the reader doesn't care…

— Salman Rushdie

If terrorism is to be defeated, the world of Islam must take on board the secularist-humanist principles on which the modern is…

— Salman Rushdie

When you're writing for the screen, you have to be hyper-conscious every moment of how the audience is going to react. If…

— Salman Rushdie

It seems to me it's perfectly possible to vehemently disagree with a piece of work and to say that it's offensive and…

— Salman Rushdie

If you were standing next to the prophet on the mountain, would you have seen the archangel? And my answer to that…

— Salman Rushdie

If you want to draw people into the story, you really have to write as if you're writing a novel and make…

— Salman Rushdie

One of the strange things about violent and authoritarian regimes is they don't like the glare of negative publicity. If you can…

— Salman Rushdie

I don't think I've ever quite grown out of it, actually. There was a point where I could recite some of those…

— Salman Rushdie

If you listen to the urban speech patterns in India you'll find it's quite characteristic that a sentence will begin in one…

— Salman Rushdie

You can't assume if you do something contentious that people will be on your side. The moment violence enters the story, the…

— Salman Rushdie

Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been…

— Salman Rushdie

If somebody's trying to shut you up, sing louder, and if possible, better.

— Salman Rushdie

Reading is a very different thing than performing. In fact, one of the things I think that doesn't work in books on…

— Salman Rushdie

thought I was doing two things. One is inquiring into the phenomenon of revelation, if you are not a religious person. But,…

— Salman Rushdie

This was an age before e-books. We all knew that the only way you can allow a book to survive in print…

— Salman Rushdie

Very often in free speech cases you find yourself defending material that you personally detest, because of course it's no trick to…

— Salman Rushdie

If you give in to the threat of violence, if you give in to bullying, what you know is that there will…

— Salman Rushdie

I think the business of writing a great deal of it is the business of paying attention to your characters, to the…

— Salman Rushdie

The act of migration puts into crisis everything about the migrating individual or group, everything about identity and selfhood and culture and…

— Salman Rushdie