Out-of-step intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and the deceased Edward Said have often been dismissed as crazy extremists, 'anti-American,' and in Mr. Said's case even, absurdly, as apologists for Palestinian 'terrorism.'
Salman Rushdie
Related I can tell you that you will have your hearts broken more by the people you love than by the people ... MARGARET PETERSON HADDIX Are you taking us to the beach?" - Dan Cahill JUDE WATSON Let's head out to the ruins." - Dan Cahill ROLAND SMITH It looks ancient," - Amy Cahill JUDE WATSON It SMELLS ancient," - Dan Cahill JUDE WATSON Palm trees were fanned by a warm, light breeze, and they rolled down their windows to smell the sea. JUDE WATSON About f-f-ace!" she said to the horse, flailing with her boots. "Into the barn, please. It's time fo... PETER LERANGIS You see?" Damien leaned over his desk and spread out half a dozen charcoal sketches. "These are only... RICK RIORDAN I'm still a big 'Grey's Anatomy' fan. BROOKE ELLIOTT I used to watch 'Grey's Anatomy' pretty religiously. ERINN HAYES I've got a few ideas," (Amy) admitted. "But I don't know where we're going in the long term. I mean ... RICK RIORDAN Alas, I think I am becoming a god. TITUS Some men by ancestry are only the shadow of a mighty name. LUCAN I have a wife, I have sons: all of them hostages given to fate. LUCAN I don't feel particularly attached to Israel - 'nationalism,' as Noam Chomsky said, '... NORMAN FINKELSTEIN Don't have to see," the pilot grunted. "Olga knows the way." "Funny name for an aircraft... GORDON KORMAN Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. SENECA Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness. SENECA We never reflect how pleasant it is to ask for nothing. SENECA Just as I shall select my ship when I am about to go on a voyage, or my house when I propose to take... SENECA Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life. SENECA Luck is where opportunity meets preparation. SENECA Friendship always benefits; love sometimes injures. SENECA I always find Victoria's Secret models a bit weird. EDIE CAMPBELL I'm proud to say that I was that guy playing the character of Dr. Burke on 'Grey's Anato... ISAIAH WASHINGTON Before 'Grey's Anatomy,' I was doing musicals, plays, commercials, you name it. CHANDRA WILSON They got rid of bottled water. We got thermoses that say 'Grey's Anatomy Season 4' with ... BROOKE SMITH There have been times where I've said, 'Jesus, I don't believe in you anymore, get out o... MIKE YACONELLI La vida es un regalo diario. Valóralo. Al final, lo que importa no son los años de vida, sino la v... PAOLA CALASANZ ''DULCINEA'' I heard an Israeli speaking on Palestinian human rights issues, an interesting guy, and he said '... BRADLEY WHITFORD In the past 30 years, officials of the Iranian regime and its apologists have labeled criticism, esp... AZAR NAFISI Vin Diesel is crazy, and when I say crazy, I mean it in a good way. He's crazy about Latinos, an... NICKY JAM If you can believe it, Hollywood wanted to change my birthdate. I was born after Valentine's Day... CESAR ROMERO All too often, government's response to social breakdown has been a classic case of 'patchin... IAIN DUNCAN SMITH I said to Ruth Rendell, 'When you've written as many books as you have, it's easier.'... VAL MCDERMID As a matter of personal philosophy, I have generally said, 'Why not?' far more often than ei... RACHEL SKLAR Apology is often the first step in correcting a wrong. Having moved for a position of saying 'I ... ALVEDA KING I am against the word 'anti' because it's a little bit like 'atheist,' as compar... MARCEL DUCHAMP I once said to a boy, 'You're a really good kisser,' and he said, 'You're only a... FKA TWIGS Mr. Idris Elba is amazing! He happens to be British, but what's funny about him is that when he&... TASHA SMITH I used to look like a deer in headlights on the red carpet. You step out of the car and it's bed... EMILY BLUNT Some media outlets refer to 'protesters' and 'militia members,' not 'terrorists,... IBRAHIM HOOPER I'm crazy. I know I'm crazy 'cause Desmond Tutu told me, and he's very clever. He sa... CRAIG FERGUSON Honestly, 'Battlestar' is a truly unique thing, and it's hard for anything to step up to... TAHMOH PENIKETT Well, first of all, I'm an incredibly gullible person - I'm so bad that when I said that to ... CARLA GUGINO If I had a nickel for every time I said 'Why me?' I'd have probably said 'Why me?... TOM WILSON if you can't have the one you love, you can love the one you have IRAZ 'DEALOVA' I've often said there's two kinds of actors. There's a more gregarious type and the shy ... AL PACINO I genuinely don't feel that anything that's been written or said about me has overshadowed m... NORAH JONES Now, most dentist's chairs go up and down, don't they? The one I was in went back and forwar... TIM VINE I worked in SRK and Salman Khan's films as a child artiste, so Bollywood has always been on my r... MADHUR MITTAL 'Shall We Dance?' takes a small, exquisite Japanese movie and turns it into a big, stupid Am... STEPHEN HUNTER In Paris, AIDS was dismissed as an American phobia until French people started dying; then everyone ... EDMUND WHITE As an actor, to go and see those shows - great plays like 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?... KEEGAN ALLEN As was the case in 'Darth Plagueis' - even going back as far as 'Cloak of Deception'... JAMES LUCENO When I auditioned for 'Bye Bye Birdie' on Broadway, Gower Champion said, 'You've got... DICK VAN DYKE I went to the doctor last week. I said: 'Can I have some sleeping pills for the wife?' He sa... LES DAWSON The first year I was in New York, I met Martha Graham. She said, 'Well, Mr. Wilson, what do you ... ROBERT WILSON Somebody said to me, 'But the Beatles were anti-materialistic.' That's a huge myth. John... PAUL MCCARTNEY For more than 30 years the Islamic regime and its apologists have tried to dismiss women's strug... AZAR NAFISI Basically, I have no place in organized politics. By coming to the British Parliament, I've allo... BERNADETTE DEVLIN It wasn't long before people discovered the final horrors of letting an urchin into Parliament. BERNADETTE DEVLIN One American said that the most interesting thing about Holy Ireland was that its people hate each o... BERNADETTE DEVLIN To gain what is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else. BERNADETTE DEVLIN I think that American presidents, that position in itself, as well as American foreign policy, it ha... LUPE FIASCO Like every other car guy, I've watched 'The Fast and the Furious,' and I want to go out ... TIM DUNCAN A friend of mine is a chef in Bali, and another friend said, 'God, he's like Brad Pitt,'... OWAIN YEOMAN In a lot of cases, as in Tom and Nicole's case, the tabloids were about to break the story, so t... MARY HART Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are two peas in the same pod, and the American people have tasted t... MITT ROMNEY Any perjury case is a tough case. You just don't go on 'he said-she said.' You have to f... VICTORIA TOENSING I've always been supportive of the right of Israel as a state, and I've always fought agains... HARRY BELAFONTE It's funny. When I saw the script in my inbox and it said 'Sparkle,' I thought, 'For... JORDIN SPARKS There's a lot of things that are good in Scientology, because I wouldn't have been in it. An... LEAH REMINI In 'There's Something About Mary' and 'Dumb & Dumber,' I ended up improvisin... HARLAND WILLIAMS It's funny, because I've never thought of myself as a Hispanic actor, like in 'American ... YUL VAZQUEZ 'When Doves Cry' came out - it sounded like nothing that was on the radio. 'Let's Go... PRINCE On 'Grey's Anatomy,' I didn't have to move too much. I think I ran through the hospi... ERIC DANE I think talking about one's love life is always... It's a Pandora's box, best kept in jo... EMMA CAULFIELD I've been in a position before where a president has turned to me in the Oval Office in a diffic... DAVID PETRAEUS I was in Africa once. I was in Kenya. I got off the plane, and I thought, 'Africa...' Some g... ED O'NEILL As I've often said, you can shop online and find whatever you're looking for, but bookstores... PAUL KRUGMAN It's crazy: the first black man to actually step foot in America came as a free man, as an explo... ALDIS HODGE Three publishers came to me at the White House after George lost and said, 'We would like to pub... BARBARA BUSH The parrot's so funny. He imitates me and I don't even realize he's doing it. I'm wa... MICK RALPHS I've been doing comedy longer than I haven't been doing comedy, as I was performing for thre... STEVEN WRIGHT It's like, backstage at 'SNL,' like, if you come back after a show or something, or a lo... VANESSA BAYER When you label someone 'up and coming' or 'the new breakout,' there's this kind ... RUTH NEGGA I have a tweet that said, 'I want to be a Calvin Klein model,' and that was in 2011. And the... CAMERON DALLAS I got thrown out of music school for even listening to Fats Domino and Ray Charles. I was asked, ... STEVE WINWOOD I've often said there's nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse. RONALD REAGAN It's a crazy world, stardom. I don't even think of myself as a star. I just like to go to wo... TAISSA FARMIGA Tilapia have often been represented as the aquatic chicken, and it's perfectly justified. DANIEL PAULY I've probably said that in every feature I've been in. I've been repeatedly defined as t... NANCY TRAVIS Extremists and populist movements are exploiting people's fear of those who are not like us. We ... KJELL MAGNE BONDEVIK Texas governor Rick Perry's wife, Anita, has come out slugging in her glittering leopard-print j... PATTI DAVIS To be accused of 'channeling' is to be dismissed as a ventriloquist's live dummy, deroga... WILLIAM SAFIRE Many novice writers try to avoid using 'said' by substituting synonyms: 'he uttered,'... NANCY KRESS A villain can be stylish, and his actions don't have to be explained. Heroes are boring in compa... DHANUSH And as an American colleague said to me several months ago, he said, 'I think the challenge in J... ABDULLAH II OF JORDAN I can remember when President Nixon basically said, 'All troops have been withdrawn from the del... RODNEY FRELINGHUYSEN
More Salman Rushdie
We are the storytelling animal. SALMAN RUSHDIE It is very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it. SALMAN RUSHDIE What happened in Pakistan was that people were told: You're all Muslim, so now you're a coun... SALMAN RUSHDIE If you're offended, it's your problem. SALMAN RUSHDIE War used to be something you could stand on the nearby hill and watch. Now we have total war; everyb... SALMAN RUSHDIE There is nothing intrinsic linking any religion with any act of violence. The crusades don't pro... SALMAN RUSHDIE The First Amendment defends all forms of speech including hate speech, which is why groups like Ku K... SALMAN RUSHDIE One of the problems with defending free speech is you often have to defend people that you find to b... SALMAN RUSHDIE When you write, you write out of your best self. Everything else drops away. SALMAN RUSHDIE What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist. SALMAN RUSHDIE Censorship is the thing that stops you doing what you want to do, and what writers want to talk abou... SALMAN RUSHDIE In an ideal world, you could reunite the Pakistan-occupied part of Kashmir with the Indian-occupied ... SALMAN RUSHDIE A purpose of our lives is to broaden what we can understand and say and therefore be. SALMAN RUSHDIE So India’s problem turns out to be the world’s problem. What happened in India has happened in G... SALMAN RUSHDIE No people whose word for 'yesterday' is the same as their word for 'tomorrow' can be said to have... SALMAN RUSHDIE The novel does not seek to establish a privileged language but it insists upon the freedom to portra... SALMAN RUSHDIE The acceptance that all that is solid has melted into the air, that reality and morality are not giv... SALMAN RUSHDIE Whores and writers, Mahound. We are the people you can't forgive. SALMAN RUSHDIE Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; t... SALMAN RUSHDIE I make no complaint. I am a writer. I do not accept my condition; I will strive to change it; but I ... SALMAN RUSHDIE I have been a film buff all my life and believe that the finest cinema is fully the equal of the bes... SALMAN RUSHDIE The suicide bomber's imagination leads him to believe in a brilliant act of heroism, when in fac... SALMAN RUSHDIE Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plaus... SALMAN RUSHDIE In writing 'The Satanic Verses,' I think I was writing for the first time from the whole of ... SALMAN RUSHDIE You can take the boy out of Bombay; you can't take Bombay out of the boy, you know. SALMAN RUSHDIE I do think of Bombay as my hometown. Those are the streets I walked when I was learning to walk. And... SALMAN RUSHDIE I have always thought, the secret purpose of the book tour is to make the writer hate the book he... SALMAN RUSHDIE Names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like s... SALMAN RUSHDIE One of the extraordinary things about human events is that the unthinkable becomes thinkable. SALMAN RUSHDIE When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy. SALMAN RUSHDIE A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape t... SALMAN RUSHDIE The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because ... SALMAN RUSHDIE I used to say: there is a God-shaped hole in me. For a long time I stressed the absence, the hole. N... SALMAN RUSHDIE The real risks for any artist are taken in pushing the work to the limits of what is possible, in th... SALMAN RUSHDIE The writers of the French enlightenment had deliberately used blasphemy as a weapon, refusing to acc... SALMAN RUSHDIE This paranoid Islam, which blames outsider, 'infidels', for all the ills of Muslim societies... SALMAN RUSHDIE I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything do... SALMAN RUSHDIE If you want to tell the untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got to fi... SALMAN RUSHDIE The liveliness of literature lies in its exceptionality, in being the individual, idiosyncratic visi... SALMAN RUSHDIE The only privilege literature deserves -- and this privilege it requires in order to exist -- is the... SALMAN RUSHDIE Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human ... SALMAN RUSHDIE Literature is the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear v... SALMAN RUSHDIE We must conclude that it is not only a particular political ideology that has failed, but the idea t... SALMAN RUSHDIE In this world without quiet corners, there can be no easy escapes from history, from hullabaloo, fro... SALMAN RUSHDIE Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself. SALMAN RUSHDIE For the barbarians were not only at our gates but within our skins. We were our own wooden horses, e... SALMAN RUSHDIE Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts. SALMAN RUSHDIE Such is the miraculous nature of the future of exiles: what is first uttered in the impotence of an ... SALMAN RUSHDIE Your blasphemy, Salman, can't be forgiven. To set your words against the Words of God. SALMAN RUSHDIE Where there is no belief, there is no blasphemy. SALMAN RUSHDIE Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plaus... SALMAN RUSHDIE Vertigo is the conflict between the fear of falling and the desire to fall. SALMAN RUSHDIE Realism can break a writer's heart. SALMAN RUSHDIE Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, the power to retell it, rethi... SALMAN RUSHDIE ...because it is the privilige and the curse of midnight's children to be both masters and victims o... SALMAN RUSHDIE Thomas Pynchon looks exactly like Thomas Pynchon should look. He is tall, he wears lumberjack shirts... SALMAN RUSHDIE I hate admitting that my enemies have a point. SALMAN RUSHDIE Most American writers don't get asked their opinion on current affairs, whereas in Europe and En... SALMAN RUSHDIE Stories in families are colossally important. Every family has stories: some funny, some proud, some... SALMAN RUSHDIE I think, in a written novel, the way in which you play with the readers' emotion or the way in w... SALMAN RUSHDIE An attack upon our ability to tell stories is not just censorship - it is a crime against our nature... SALMAN RUSHDIE Pakistan is alarmed by the rising Indian influence in Afghanistan, and fears that an Afghanistan cle... SALMAN RUSHDIE British society has never been cleansed of the filth of imperialism. SALMAN RUSHDIE Straight answers were beyond the powers of Rashid Khalifa, who would never take a short cut if there... SALMAN RUSHDIE Self-censorship is a lie to yourself; if you are going to be trying to seriously create art, to crea... SALMAN RUSHDIE What's real and what's true aren't necessarily the same. SALMAN RUSHDIE Most of what matters in our lives takes place in our absence. SALMAN RUSHDIE faith without doubt is addiction SALMAN RUSHDIE Our lives disconnect and reconnect, we move on, and later we may again touch one another, again boun... SALMAN RUSHDIE The only people who see the whole picture,' he murmured, 'are the ones who step out of the frame. SALMAN RUSHDIE We all owe death a life. SALMAN RUSHDIE Free societies...are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free peo... SALMAN RUSHDIE To understand just one life you have to swallow the world ... do you wonder, then, that I was a heav... SALMAN RUSHDIE Nobody has the right to not be offended. That right doesn't exist in any declaration I have ever rea... SALMAN RUSHDIE A photograph is a moral decision taken in one eighth of a second. SALMAN RUSHDIE A poet's work . . . to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape... SALMAN RUSHDIE What kind of idea are you? Are you the kind that compromises, does deals, accomodates itself to soci... SALMAN RUSHDIE When a reader falls in love with a book, it leaves its essence inside him, like radioactive fallout ... SALMAN RUSHDIE Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you b... SALMAN RUSHDIE Now I know what a ghost is. Unfinished business, that's what. SALMAN RUSHDIE Memory's truth, because memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates... SALMAN RUSHDIE Whenever someone who knows you disappears, you lose one version of yourself. Yourself as you were se... SALMAN RUSHDIE Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true... SALMAN RUSHDIE My horizon's have shrunk and I have only endings to write. SALMAN RUSHDIE Make as much racket as you like people. Noise is life and an excess of noise is a sign that life is ... SALMAN RUSHDIE In television, the 60-minute series, 'The Wire' and 'Mad Men' and so on, the writer ... SALMAN RUSHDIE If the creative artist worries if he will still be free tomorrow, then he will not be free today. SALMAN RUSHDIE Hyperrealism can create an atmosphere of surrealism because nobody sees the world in such detail. SALMAN RUSHDIE The difference between memoir and autobiography, as far as I see it, is that a memoir is there prima... SALMAN RUSHDIE In any authoritarian society, the possessor of power dictates, and if you try and step outside, he w... SALMAN RUSHDIE One of the strange things about violent and authoritarian regimes is they don't like the glare o... SALMAN RUSHDIE The response of anybody interested in liberty is that we all have a say and the ability to have an a... SALMAN RUSHDIE Many writers who have had to deal with the subject of atrocity can't face it head-on. SALMAN RUSHDIE Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanat... SALMAN RUSHDIE If you live in free countries, you don't have to spend all your life arguing about freedom becau... SALMAN RUSHDIE What I worry about and don't like is the way in which the ideology of multiculturalism has decli... SALMAN RUSHDIE Sometimes great, banned works defy the censor's description and impose themselves on the world -... SALMAN RUSHDIE The Koran was revealed at a time of great change in the Arab world, the seventh-century shift from a... SALMAN RUSHDIE One of the reasons my name is Rushdie is that my father was an admirer of Ibn Rush'd, the 12th c... SALMAN RUSHDIE At the height of the British Empire very few English novels were written that dealt with British pow... SALMAN RUSHDIE Original thought, original artistic expression is by its very nature questioning, irreverent, iconoc... SALMAN RUSHDIE There are two things in Indian history - one is the incredible optimism and potential of the place, ... SALMAN RUSHDIE The only thing worse than a bad review from the Ayatollah Khomeini would be a good review from the A... SALMAN RUSHDIE I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a b... SALMAN RUSHDIE I'm not a prophet, but I always thought it was natural for dictatorships to fall. I remember in ... SALMAN RUSHDIE But there's one thing we must all be clear about: terrorism is not the pursuit of legitimate goa... SALMAN RUSHDIE I'm a big-city boy. What I like is big cities. It's not just what I like. It's what I wr... SALMAN RUSHDIE Two things form the bedrock of any open society - freedom of expression and rule of law. If you don&... SALMAN RUSHDIE Mahound comes to me for revelation, asking me to choose between monotheist and henotheist alternativ... SALMAN RUSHDIE Don't let the zealots make Muslim a terrifying word." [1,000 Days 'Trapped Inside a Me... SALMAN RUSHDIE Fundamentalism isn't about religion, it's about power. SALMAN RUSHDIE From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable. SALMAN RUSHDIE When...did it become irrational to dislike religion, any religion, even to dislike it vehemently? Wh... SALMAN RUSHDIE Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one. SALMAN RUSHDIE All my adult life, if I didn't have several hours a day to sit in a room by myself, I would get ... SALMAN RUSHDIE American literature has always been immigrant. SALMAN RUSHDIE I've met the Dalai Lama briefly, but I would probably say my grandfather was the wisest person I... SALMAN RUSHDIE Our lives are not what we deserve; they are, let us agree, in many ways deficient. SALMAN RUSHDIE I have had many more close women friends than men, and I've always assumed that comes from the f... SALMAN RUSHDIE Before I came to England, my favorite authors were P. G. Wodehouse and Agatha Christie. I used to de... SALMAN RUSHDIE This is going to make me sound ancient, but I remember Juhu Beach when there weren't any buildin... SALMAN RUSHDIE If Woody Allen were a Muslim, he'd be dead by now. SALMAN RUSHDIE A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in ret... SALMAN RUSHDIE Our lives teach us who we are. SALMAN RUSHDIE Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long. It is for art to capture that ex... SALMAN RUSHDIE How do you defeat terrorism? Don’t be terrorized. SALMAN RUSHDIE A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape... SALMAN RUSHDIE What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second,... SALMAN RUSHDIE If you look at Indian movies, every time they wanted an exotic locale, they would have a dance numbe... SALMAN RUSHDIE I think that we live in a very timid age, and a part of our timidity arises from our unwillingness t... SALMAN RUSHDIE I write books I'd enjoy reading, I'm the reader standing behind my shoulder. SALMAN RUSHDIE It seems that the right of freedom of speech that was enshrined in numerous constitutions is now und... SALMAN RUSHDIE Islam is unusual in that it's the only one of the great world religions which was born inside re... SALMAN RUSHDIE It's Kennedy's war, Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson got all the flak, but it's Kennedy's war... SALMAN RUSHDIE And now, as if to finish things off, the Himalayan winter is setting in, and the greatest calamity o... SALMAN RUSHDIE As a writer, one of the things we all learned from the movies was a kind of compression that didn... SALMAN RUSHDIE What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist SALMAN RUSHDIE Have you noticed the physical resemblance between Imran Khan and Gaddafi? If you were making a movie... SALMAN RUSHDIE Certainly, poverty and economic decline have a lot to do with the so-called rage of Islam. You'v... SALMAN RUSHDIE A poet's work is to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shap... SALMAN RUSHDIE A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, sha... SALMAN RUSHDIE Free societies are societies in motion, and with motion comes friction. SALMAN RUSHDIE If you're on a freeway and want to know if you're being followed, what you do is enormously ... SALMAN RUSHDIE In the real world, immeasurable hurt is caused by terrorists based in Pakistan who attack countries ... SALMAN RUSHDIE When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy SALMAN RUSHDIE The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because ... SALMAN RUSHDIE What I've always tried to find in my books are points at which the private lives of the characte... SALMAN RUSHDIE wants the dreadful, wants to stare down the human race's worst-case scenarios. SALMAN RUSHDIE Rohinton Mistry's celebrated novel 'Such a Long Journey' was pulled off the syllabus of ... SALMAN RUSHDIE Meanwhile, it seems, the world is suffering from compassion fatigue, SALMAN RUSHDIE I've never seen anywhere in the world as beautiful as Kashmir. It has something to do with the f... SALMAN RUSHDIE The enemy for the fanatic is pleasure, which makes it extremely important to continue to indulge in ... SALMAN RUSHDIE Matthew Wiener on 'Mad Men' writes the entire series before they start shooting, and if you ... SALMAN RUSHDIE Someone asked me if I was afraid to write my memoirs. I told him: 'We have to stop drawing up ac... SALMAN RUSHDIE I only met Margaret Thatcher twice. The thing that I thought about meeting her was how extraordinari... SALMAN RUSHDIE A change in direction was required. The story you finished was perhaps never the one you began. Yes!... SALMAN RUSHDIE In today's U.S., it's possible for almost anyone - women, gays, African-Americans, Jews - to... SALMAN RUSHDIE When 'Midnight's Children' came out, people in the West tended to respond to the fantasy... SALMAN RUSHDIE The accidents of my life have given me the ability to make stories in which different parts of the w... SALMAN RUSHDIE Sometimes writing a novel is not unlike having a baby. You'd have to ask a female novelist to co... SALMAN RUSHDIE I have a deep feeling for Kashmir, and I just had to write this book, ... [But] it's very hard to wr... SALMAN RUSHDIE One of the strange things that happens when you publish a book is that you begin ... to see what res... SALMAN RUSHDIE The real risks for any artist are taken in pushing the work to the limits of what is possible, in th... SALMAN RUSHDIE Most of what matters in your life takes place in your absence. SALMAN RUSHDIE Friendships are the family we make - not the one we inherit. I've always been someone to whom fr... SALMAN RUSHDIE I didn't want to become some embittered old hack getting his revenge for the rest of my life. An... SALMAN RUSHDIE antediluvian, who think of homosexuality as ungodly, who have little time for real freedom of expres... SALMAN RUSHDIE Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plaus... SALMAN RUSHDIE Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to ... SALMAN RUSHDIE At sixteen, you still think you can escape from your father. You aren't listening to his voice speak... SALMAN RUSHDIE There is a widespread difficulty in the Muslim world, which has to do with how the people are taught... SALMAN RUSHDIE I remember when I was young, many cities in the Muslim world were cosmopolitan cities with a lot of ... SALMAN RUSHDIE There'll be one track that I like and a lot of it that is just wallpaper and sounds the same. SALMAN RUSHDIE Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another's, were no longer our own, individual, discrete. SALMAN RUSHDIE If I were asked for a one-sentence sound bite on religion, I would say I was against it. SALMAN RUSHDIE I used to write a monthly column for the 'New York Times' syndicate. But I stopped because I... SALMAN RUSHDIE If you were an atheist, Birbal," the Emperor challenged his first minister, "what would you say to t... SALMAN RUSHDIE It matters, it always matters, to name rubbish as rubbish … to do otherwise is to legitimize it."<... SALMAN RUSHDIE One of the things I've learnt is not to depend on there being a woman in your life to make it wo... SALMAN RUSHDIE The fundamentalist seeks to bring down a great deal more than buildings. Such people are against, to... SALMAN RUSHDIE Repression is a seamless garment; a society which is authoritarian in its social and sexual codes, w... SALMAN RUSHDIE When a book leaves its author's desk it changes. Even before anyone has read it, before eyes other t... SALMAN RUSHDIE Always do something impossible right at the beginning of the show?. Swallow a sword, tie yourself in... SALMAN RUSHDIE I've tried to live without fear. Fear paralyzes you. I've tried to get on with my life. SALMAN RUSHDIE I've been gradually reclaiming all kinds of freedoms over these years.., SALMAN RUSHDIE Obviously, it is a very great honor and I'm very pleased to have it, and it's very nice to be recogn... SALMAN RUSHDIE I think it's a stupid way to read a book, ... to say that because something happens to one person th... SALMAN RUSHDIE Life is fury, he'd thought. Fury — sexual, Oedipal, political, magical, brutal — drives us to ou... SALMAN RUSHDIE If I were asked for a one-sentence sound bite on religion, I would say I was against it SALMAN RUSHDIE Masks beneath masks until suddenly the bare bloodless skull. SALMAN RUSHDIE Nobody ever wanted to go to war, but if a war came your way, it might as well be the right war, abou... SALMAN RUSHDIE A question I have often asked is, ‘What would an inoffensive political cartoon look like?’ What ... SALMAN RUSHDIE What one writer can make in the solitude of one room is something no power can easily destroy. SALMAN RUSHDIE Many of us persons of the tinted persuasion care about human rights and artistic freedom too. SALMAN RUSHDIE From such defensive, separated worlds some youngsters have indefensibly stepped across a moral line ... SALMAN RUSHDIE Susan Sontag was a great literary artist,"a fearless and original thinker, ever valiant for truth, a... SALMAN RUSHDIE However, in the end, the question [remains]: Why him and not the man standing next to him? Why did t... SALMAN RUSHDIE The Satanic Verses. SALMAN RUSHDIE Rock and roll music - the music of freedom frightens people and unleashes all manner of conservative... SALMAN RUSHDIE از همان زمان برمن روشن شد که خانواده بهطور ضمنی به اصل... SALMAN RUSHDIE