I discovered that if you find the language to talk to younger readers, children can accept anything. — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
The history of a culture can be determined by its untranslatable words. — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true. — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
A figure of speech is a shifty thing; it can be twisted or it can be straight. — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
We were language's magpies by nature, stealing whatever sounded bright and shiny. — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
He had picked up languages the way most sailors pick up diseases; languages were his gonorrhoea, his syphilis, his scurvy, his ague,… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
The only privilege literature deserves - and this privilege it requires in order to exist - is the privilege of being in… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
It's fun to read things when you don't know all the words. Even children love it... they come up against weird words,… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
“...that witchcraft requires no potions, familiar spirits, or magic wands. Language upon a silver tongue affords enchantment enough.” — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
The novel does not seek to establish a privileged language but it insists upon the freedom to portray and analyze the struggle… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
Only the foolish, blinded by language's conventions, think of fire as red or gold. Fire is blue at it's melancholy rim, green… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
I think that a lot of us, whether we are religious or not - there are no words to express some things… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
“mingling with the remains of the plane, equally fragmented, equally absurd, there floated the debris of the soul, broken memories, sloughed-off selves,… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
What had been (at the beginning) no bigger than a full stop had expanded into a comma, a word, a sentence, a… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
In India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
And at the end of the day, there was an attempt to suppress a book. The book wasn't suppressed. It's freely available… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist. Without the freedom to challenge, even to satirize… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
“Later, when his desires had been satisfied, he slept in an odorous whorehouse, snoring lustily next to an insomniac tart, and dreamed.… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
“That was how we spoke, my mother and I: in puns and games and rhymes. In, you might say, lyrics. This was… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
I don't think it is always necessary to take up the anti-colonial -- or is it post-colonial? -- cudgels against English. What… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
When I was growing up, everyone around me was fond of fooling around with words. It was certainly common in my family,… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
Khattam-Shud,' he said slowly, 'is the Arch-Enemy of all Stories, even of language itself. He is the Prince of Silence and the… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
If my child had prejudice in his head, I'd be ashamed. I would see it as my failure as a parent. — Salman Rushdie Copy Share
Sometimes by a woodland stream he watched the water rush over the pebbled bed, its tiny modulations of bounce and flow. A woman's body… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share
I want to write novels. I want to write stories. I want to do the stuff that I became a writer to do. — Salman Rushdie Copy Share
If you want to be a serious writer, then you have to write what there is to write about. If you're going to pull… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share
“Después de exigir mi marcha, ya no posees jurisdicción en lo concerniente a mi salud.” — Salman Rushdie Copy Share
If there is a choice between absolute safety and freedom, then freedom must always prevail. — Salman Rushdie Copy Share
I'm not a prophet, but I always thought it was natural for dictatorships to fall. I remember in 1989, two months before the fall… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share
I'd wanted to create a storm so that I could become more famous and richer. — Salman Rushdie Copy Share
Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done,… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share
“information, in a stream-of-consciousness soliloquy that revealed the extent to which he had internalised the adversarial fragmentation of American culture and made it a… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share
A little bit of one story joins onto an idea from another, and hey presto, . . . not old tales but new ones.… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share
The First Amendment defends all forms of speech including hate speech, which is why groups like Ku Klux Klan are allowed to utter their… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share
