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

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

Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.
Salman Rushdie

Our lives teach us who we are.
Salman Rushdie

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

I used to say, 'There is a God-shaped hole in me.' For a long time I stressed the absence, the hole. Now I find it is the shape which has become more important.
Salman Rushdie

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