Salman Rushdie Quotes

485 quotes in 4787 categories

• The only privilege literature deserves - and this privilege it requires in order to exist - is the privilege of being in the arena of…
• The liveliness of literature lies in its exceptionality, in being the individual, idiosyncratic vision of one human being, in which, to our delight and great…
• Five mysteries hold the keys to the unseen: the act of love, and the birth of a baby, and the contemplation of great art, and…
• There needs to be a thorough examination, by Muslims everywhere, of why it is that the faith they love breeds so many violent mutant strains.
• Live on, survive, for the earth gives forth wonders. It may swallow your heart, but the wonders keep on coming. You stand before them bareheaded,…
• Good advice is rarer than rubies.
• In India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we…
• For a fellow who's not to much to look at, you have the instincts of a champion.
• A man who invents himself needs someone to believe in him... Not only the need to be believed in, but the need to believe in…
• Free speech is life itself.
• After a long, hopeless war, people will settle for peace, at almost any price.
• If you want to tell the untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got to find a language. Which goes…
• Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long. It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it to, in the…
• Freedom to reject is the only freedom.
• You can find shame in every house, burning in an ashtray, hanging framed upon a wall, covering a bed. But nobody notices it any more.
• Life is elsewhere. Cross frontiers. Fly away.
• Human beings understand themselves and shape their futures by arguing and challenging and questioning and saying the un-sayable, not by bowing the knee whether to…
• Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars.…
• What kind of idea are you? Are you the kind that compromises, does deals, accomodates itself to society, aims to find a niche, to survive;…
• And so it is they who, between them, give me all the reasons for believing in none.

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