Quotes By Salman Rushdie

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.

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

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

The only way to find out why someone decides to engage in armed combat is to look at their individual personality.

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

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.

What one writer can make in the solitude of one room is something no power can easily destroy.

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

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.

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

Our lives are not what we deserve; they are, let us agree, in many ways deficient.

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

The only way of living in a free society is to feel that you have the right to say and do stuff.

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

Our lives teach us who we are.

Rock and roll music - the music of freedom frightens people and unleashes all manner of conservative defense mechanisms.

If you actually want to change your world, there is a better way of doing it than blowing yourself up.

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

I've never seen anywhere in the world as beautiful as Kashmir. It has something to do with the fact that the valley is very small and the mountains are very big, so you have this miniature countryside surrounded by the Himalayas, and it's just spectacular. And it's true, the people are very beautiful too.