Salman Rushdie Quotes

A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.
Salman Rushdie

Poetry, Work, Sleep

I didn't want to become some embittered old hack getting his revenge for the rest of my life. And I didn't want to become some scared creature cowering in a corner. I remember telling myself not to carry the hatred around, although I know where it is. I have it in a trunk in storage.
Salman Rushdie

Life, Revenge, Remember

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.
Salman Rushdie

Freedom, Expression, Exist

I've never had very high regard for therapists. I owe my health, my mental survival, to my friends and loved ones.
Salman Rushdie

Health, Friends, Loved

A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.
Salman Rushdie

Book, Ignore, Return

What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry.
Salman Rushdie

Great, Artist, Weak

If Woody Allen were a Muslim, he'd be dead by now.
Salman Rushdie

Dead, Muslim, Allen

Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.
Salman Rushdie

Life, Game, Free

I do not need the idea of God to explain the world I live in.
Salman Rushdie

God, Live, Idea

Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanation, have wrought havoc among mere mixed-up human beings.
Salman Rushdie

History, Human, Among

Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.
Salman Rushdie

Act, Books, Choose

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 of the Berlin Wall, had you said it was going to happen no one would have believed you. The system seemed powerful and unbreakable. Suddenly overnight it blew away like dust.
Salman Rushdie

Powerful, Happen, Thought

One of the extraordinary things about human events is that the unthinkable becomes thinkable.
Salman Rushdie

Human, Events, Becomes

The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas - uncertainty, progress, change - into crimes.
Salman Rushdie

Change, Idea, Progress

When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy.
Salman Rushdie

Thought, Action, Painful

When you write, you write out of your best self. Everything else drops away.
Salman Rushdie

Best, Self, Everything

The accidents of my life have given me the ability to make stories in which different parts of the world are brought together, sometimes harmoniously, sometimes in conflict, and sometimes both - usually both. The difficulty in these stories is that if you write about everywhere you can end up writing about nowhere.
Salman Rushdie

Life, End, Writing

Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts.
Salman Rushdie

Reality, Sometimes, Become

Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory.
Salman Rushdie

Fight, Try, Same

But there's one thing we must all be clear about: terrorism is not the pursuit of legitimate goals by some sort of illegitimate means. Whatever the murderers may be trying to achieve, creating a better world certainly isn't one of their goals. Instead they are out to murder innocent people.
Salman Rushdie

May, Trying, Whatever

Doubt, it seems to me, is the central condition of a human being in the twentieth century.
Salman Rushdie

Human, Doubt, Seems

I hate admitting that my enemies have a point.
Salman Rushdie

Hate, Point, Admitting

If you take a look at history, you will find that the understanding of what is good and evil has always existed before the individual religions. The religions were only invented by people afterwards, in order to express this idea.
Salman Rushdie

Good, History, Evil

It's so disappointing, to put it mildly, that people know so much about my life. Because it means that they're always trying to look at my books in terms of my life.
Salman Rushdie

Life, Trying, Put

Most of what matters in your life takes place in your absence.
Salman Rushdie

Life, Place, Takes

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Biography

Nationality: Indian

Born: June 19, 1947

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