“In these our cowardly times, we deny the grandeur of the Universal, and assert and glorify our local Bigotries, and so we… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
“Then a strange moment came, a moment of the kind that determines the fate of nations, because when a crowd loses its… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
“Africa, have you seen it? No? Then is it truly there?...And the past, did it happen? And the future, will it come?… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
The moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible. — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
If Turkey wants to join Europe, it will have to become a European country, and that might take a long time. — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
“The future, even when it was only a question-shrouded glimmer, would not be eclipsed by the past; even when death moved towards… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
The Koran was revealed at a time of great change in the Arab world, the seventh-century shift from a matriarchal nomadic culture… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
I used to say, 'There is a God-shaped hole in me.' For a long time I stressed the absence, the hole. Now… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
In any authoritarian society, the possessor of power dictates, and if you try and step outside, he will come after you. This… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
“It is hard for a person of no faith like myself to comprehend the moment when faith dies in the human heart.… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
I fell victim to the temptation of every autobiographer, to the illusion that since the past exists only in one's memories and… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
“From the moment their pact is made, that devil’s contract that will make neither of them happy, there’s no stopping them. At… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
In writing 'The Satanic Verses,' I think I was writing for the first time from the whole of myself. The English part,… — 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
“...because it is the privilige and the curse of midnight's children to be both masters and victims of their times, to forsake… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
“The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it’s a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
“Time passes. Big men dwindle, small men grow. This man shrinks into old age, those men’s reach grows longer. They can stretch… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
“Also – for there had been more than a few migrants aboard, yes, quite a quantity of wives who had been grilled… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
“I was born in the city of Bombay ... once upon a time. No, that won't do, there's no getting away from… — 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
“Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but… — 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
“Also, on account of the odd relationship between time and space, the people who do manage to time-jump sometimes space-jump at the… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
“During his illness he had spent every minute of consciousness calling upon God, every second of every minute. Ya Allah whose servant… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
“Once upon a time there was a mother who, in order to become a mother, had agreed to change her name; who… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
No people whose word for 'yesterday' is the same as their word for 'tomorrow' can be said to have a firm grip… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
Such is the miraculous nature of the future of exiles: what is first uttered in the impotence of an overheated apartment becomes… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“Anybody who's spent any time with machines at all,' he added, 'and baby, that's us all, knows first and foremost there's only… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
Every time you finish a book, you have a terrible feeling that there's just never going to be another one. But fortunately,… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
“She watched him recede into the past as he stood...each successive moment of him passing before her eyes and being lost forever.” — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
You don't that often see writers being sought out when there are matters of great moment to discuss. And I think that's… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
We live in a frightened time, and people self-censor all the time and are afraid of going into some subjects because they… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
When you're writing for the screen you're really thinking all the time of what you have to do to make sure that… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
“time, in my experience, has been as variable and inconstant as Bombay’s electric power supply. Just telephone the speaking clock if you… — 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
“Her parents were killed in their private helicopter. An elite death but at the moment of dying we are all penniless. She… — Salman Rushdie Copy Share Image
“Religion was the glue of Pakistan, holding the halves together; just as consciousness, the awareness of oneself as a homogenous entity in… — 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
