Salman Rushdie quotes - page 14

Look at history. It's not the account of a species at peace. (Salman Rushdie)
If you want to tell the untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got to find a language. Which goes for film as well as prose, for documentary as well as autobiography. Use the wrong language, and you're dumb and blind. View quote
Salman Rushdie
Your blasphemy, Salman, can't be forgiven. To set your words against the Words of God. View quote
Salman Rushdie
The world is full of things that upset people. But most of us deal with it and move on and don't try and burn the planet down. View quote
Salman Rushdie
I'm definitely post-something. View quote
Salman Rushdie
In a novel, if you're any good, you don't just have good people or bad people. You have complicated people. You have real people. View quote
Salman Rushdie
The question I'm always asking myself is: are we masters or victims? Do we make history, or does history make us? Do we shape the world, or are we just shaped by it? The question of do we have agency in our lives or whether we are just passive victims of events is, I think, a great question, and one that I have always tried to ask. View quote
Salman Rushdie
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.' View quote
Salman Rushdie
When we stop believing in the gods we can start believing in their stories. View quote
Salman Rushdie
There's a lot of conflict and darkness inside everybody's family. We all pretend to outsiders that it's not so but behind locked doors there are usually high emotions running. View quote
Salman Rushdie
War used to be something you could stand on the nearby hill and watch. Now we have total war; everybody's in it. We have total economics as well. Everything affects everybody. The Malaysian currency shakes, and people around the world are seriously affected. (Salman Rushdie)
I do have a lot of time for people in my life, and friendship is a very important subject for me. I think I'm unusual among the writers I know in that respect. View quote
Salman Rushdie
In early Islam, it was an absolute tenet that the prophet was not to be worshipped. The prophet was a messenger. And one of the things that's happened in Islam is this cult of the prophet, which to my view is counter to the original tradition. View quote
Salman Rushdie
The West should be tougher on Pakistan. It is trying to play both ends against the middle - to look like the friend of the revolutionaries on the one hand and a friend of the West in the fight against terrorism. It can't be both things. View quote
Salman Rushdie
A figure of speech is a shifty thing; it can be twisted or it can be straight. View quote
Salman Rushdie
I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a bad rap from history, and that he was actually a person quite unlike what we now think of as Machiavellian. He was a republican. He disliked totalitarian government. View quote
Salman Rushdie
When I'm writing books, something weird happens; and the result is the books contain a large amount of what you could call 'supernaturalism.' As a writer, I find I need that to explain the world I'm writing about. View quote
Salman Rushdie
Most American writers don't get asked their opinion on current affairs, whereas in Europe and England, we still do. There are writers here who are the most sophisticated commentators, but they're not asked. Like Don DeLillo, who sort of forecast most of the modern world before it happened. View quote
Salman Rushdie
When 'Midnight's Children' came out, people in the West tended to respond to the fantasy elements in the novel, to praise it in those terms. In India, people read it like a history book. View quote
Salman Rushdie
Normally when I read, I don't like music playing. View quote
Salman Rushdie
When you are writing a book, it feels as if you are simply concentrating on the world of the book and that whatever is happening in your personal life is outside the room, as it were. But maybe that's just the way you have to talk to yourself to make it possible. (Salman Rushdie)
The interesting thing about history sometimes. is that you know these people existed, and you knew what jobs they did, but you don't know much about them as people, so you actually have to make them up. View quote
Salman Rushdie
The gamble of literature is that I make the best work I can; the most truthful, the most representative of how I see things. I try and do that and then I put it out there and say to you, "What do you think?" I hope that you think well of it, obviously. View quote
Salman Rushdie
I don't read my books, I write them. Once I've finished the many years it usually takes me to write them, I can't bear to read them, because I've spent too long with them already. I'm not advertising them very well, am I? View quote
Salman Rushdie
Certainly, poverty and economic decline have a lot to do with the so-called rage of Islam. You've got all these young men in countries which are economically in bad shape. The idea that they might be able to make a good living and get married and have a family, a decent life, seems very remote to a lot of people in a lot of the world. View quote
Salman Rushdie