“I fell victim to the temptation of every autobiographer, to the illusion that since the past exists only in one’s memories and the words which strive vainly to encapsulate them, it is possible to create past events simply by saying they occurred.”
— Salman Rushdie
“Only the foolish, blinded by language’s conventions, think of fire as red or gold. Fire is blue at it’s melancholy rim, green in it’s envious heart. It may burn white, or even, in it’s greatest rages, black.”
“A man who catches History’s eye is thereafter bound to a mistress from whom he will never escape.”
“In this world without quiet corners, there can be no easy escapes from history, from hullabaloo, from terrible, unquiet fuss.”
“My grandmother was very fierce and gruff. She was quite small, but she was very wide.”
“Chekhov is this poet of melancholy and isolation and of wishing you were somewhere else than where you are.”
“There is nothing intrinsic linking any religion with any act of violence. The crusades don’t prove that Christianity was violent. The Inquisition doesn’t prove that Christianity tortures people. But that Christianity did torture people.”
“Anyone who has had the experience of going through American security checks knows the purpose of these checks is not to make you safer; it’s just to annoy you.”
“I grew up in a family in which there was very little religion. My father wasn’t religious at all. But he was really interested in the subject of, you know, the birth and growth of Islam. And he basically transmitted that interest to me.”
“You never know the answers to the questions of life until you are asked.”
“I think that a lot of us, whether we are religious or not – there are no words to express some things except religious words. For instance, ‘soul.’”
“What happened in Pakistan was that people were told: You’re all Muslim, so now you’re a country. As we saw in 1971 with the Bangladesh secession, the answer to that was: ‘Oh no, we’re not.’”
“The Republicans were not always insane. They might’ve had politics I didn’t agree with, but they weren’t always actually certifiable.”
“It is commonly and, I believe, accurately said of Pakistan that her women are much more impressive than her men.”
“The problem’s name is God.”
“The worst, most insidious effect of censorship is that, in the end, it can deaden the imagination of the people. Where there is no debate, it is hard to go on remembering, every day, that there is a suppressed side to every argument.”
“I am gagged and imprisoned. I can’t even speak. I want to kick a football in a park with my son. Ordinary, banal life: my impossible dream.”
“Bin Laden was born filthy rich and died in a rich man’s house, which he had painstakingly built to the highest specifications.”
“Airport security exists to guard us against terrorist attacks.”
“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.”
“Nobody wants to read a 600 page book in which the author is fabulous throughout.”
“Names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like so many of the earth’s marvels, beneath the dust of habit.”
“I am on Facebook, but mainly as a way to spy on my children. I find out more about them from their Facebook pages than from what they tell me.”
“What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry.”
“I think the book is less emotional than the film. With the film, the emotions are much more raw and in front. In the book, they are kind of ironized and seen through comedy.”
“The whole story of migration and what that has done in interconnecting the planet is obviously something I’ve written about a lot.”
“I had a very difficult relationship with my father, which ended up okay, but there were many difficult years.”
“No, I don’t think it’s fair to label Islam ‘violent.’ But I will say that to my knowledge, no writer has ever gone into hiding for criticizing the Amish.”
“The sixty-minute drama form has become very rich.”
“A book is not completed till it’s read.”
“What I’ve always seen in writers and artists is the courage it takes to make an original work of art. I think the real risks in literature are linguistic and intellectual, and I hope we can highlight those, as well as political courage.”
“I was very happy in Bombay. I was good at school. There was no reason to change anything. I suppose it must have been some spirit of adventure, of wanting to see the world.”
“In the experience of art, time seems not to exist. When I’m writing and think, “I’ve been working for two hours,” I’ve actually been working for seven.”
“My children are English, and both of their mothers were English.”
“I’ve never yet managed to write a novel which didn’t have an Indian central character.”
“Sometimes great, banned works defy the censor’s description and impose themselves on the world – ‘Ulysses,’ ‘Lolita,’ the ‘Arabian Nights.’”
“I always thought the front line was the bookstores. And bookstores around America, around the world did astonishingly well. They held the line. They didn’t chicken out. You know, they defended the book. They kept it in the front of the store.”
“I get a lot of letters – a lot of letters saying, who knew that you were funny?”
“I write books I’d enjoy reading, I’m the reader standing behind my shoulder.”
“Sometimes you find your voice by trying to write like people, and sometimes you find it by trying to write unlike people.”
“The glamour of being forbidden must not be underestimated.”
“Mo Yan is the Chinese equivalent of the Soviet Russian apparatchik writer Mikhail Sholokhov: a patsy of the regime.”
“I am clearly vulnerable to these more passionate and volatile unstable relationships. I am trying to not be so vulnerable.”
“We who have grown up on a diet of honour and shame can still grasp what must seem unthinkable to people living in the aftermath of the death of God and of tragedy: that men will sacrifice their dearest love on the implacable altars of their pride.”
“But love is what we want, not freedom. Who then is the unluckier man? The beloved, who is given his heart’s desire and must for ever after fear its loss, or the free man, with his unlooked-for liberty, naked and alone between the captive armies of the earth?”
“A relationship with an imaginary woman is preferable to a relationship with a real one.”
“Religion, a medieval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today.”
“Discovery is fun. I am incredibly open to everything.”
“We crave permission openly to become our secret selves.”
“The only way of living in a free society is to feel that you have the right to say and do stuff.”
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