In a novel, if you're any good, you don't just have good people or bad people. You have complicated people. You have… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
I do not envy people who think they have a complete explanation of the world, for the simple reason that they are… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
People are always telling me that they've seen people reading my books on the subway, or the beach, or whenever. — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
Free speech is not just free speech for people you admire. It's also for people who you think of as reprehensible. — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
When people do the cowardly thing, it's not about respect, it's about fear. — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
The reason why books endure is because there are enough people who like them. It's the only reason why books last. — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
Rock and roll music - the music of freedom frightens people and unleashes all manner of conservative defense mechanisms. — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
Sometimes people have said that Islam, in its own calendar, is still only in the Middle Ages. — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
Make as much racket as you like people. Noise is life and an excess of noise is a sign that life is… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
I think people direct good films when they feel personal to them, not because it's a famous book or something. It has… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
What happened in Pakistan was that people were told: You're all Muslim, so now you're a country. As we saw in 1971… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
There is nothing intrinsic linking any religion with any act of violence. The crusades don't prove that Christianity was violent. The Inquisition… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
The interesting thing about history sometimes. is that you know these people existed, and you knew what jobs they did, but you… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
People can do bad things with free speech as well as good. You have to defend the Ku Klux Klan as well… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
War used to be something you could stand on the nearby hill and watch. Now we have total war; everybody's in it.… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
Some people are paralyzed by the consciousness of death, other people live with it… The fatwa certainly made me think about it… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
I suppose authoritarians don't like being made fun of because authoritarian rulers have a very inflated sense of themselves and don't like… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
Certainly, poverty and economic decline have a lot to do with the so-called rage of Islam. You've got all these young men… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
I was living in New York at the time of the 9/11 attacks. And I remember, you know, in those weeks that… — 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
Meaning is a shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood injuries, newspaper articles, chance remarks, old fillms, small victories, people… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
I think, in a written novel, the way in which you play with the readers' emotion or the way in which you… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
But there's one thing we must all be clear about: terrorism is not the pursuit of legitimate goals by some sort of… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
In our time, we have become too interested in the artist and his or her character and experience as a way of… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
The desire for story is very, very deep in human beings. We are the only creature in the world that does this;… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
In Europe, the Enlightenment of the 18th century was seen as a battle against the desire of the Church to limit intellectual… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
One of the problems of truth being censored for a really long time is that people lose the ability to intuit what… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
You've got a generation of young men - almost all are young men - in situations of great economic hardship, where they… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
The world is full of things that upset people. But most of us deal with it and move on and don't try… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
Things, even people have a way of leaking into each other like flavours when you cook. — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
I don't think people cry reading 'Midnight's Children,' but a lot of people seem to cry watching the movie. — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
The frustrating part of being tagged 'controversial' is people go looking for trouble where there isn't any to look for. — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
Sometimes, people trying to commit suicide manage it in a manner that leaves them breathless with astonishment. — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
“The only people who see the whole picture are the ones who step outside the frame.” — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
Sometimes you find your voice by trying to write like people, and sometimes you find it by trying to write unlike people. — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
Don't you know girls have to fool people every day of their lives if they want to get anywhere? — 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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“Después de exigir mi marcha, ya no posees jurisdicción en lo concerniente a mi salud.” — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
If there is a choice between absolute safety and freedom, then freedom must always prevail. — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
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 Image
I'd wanted to create a storm so that I could become more famous and richer. — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
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 Image
“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 Image
