Quotes by Salman Rushdie

About Salman Rushdie:

Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is a British Indian novelist and essayist. His second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981. Much of his fiction is set on the Indian subcontinent. He is said to combine magical realism with historical fiction; his work is concerned with the many connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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 victim...

Salman Rushdie

The great concern is that year after year, rising numbers of journalists are being killed in pursuit of their work. They are increasingly seen as not being neutral but rather as combatants by one side or the other.

Salman Rushdie

I'm a reader of Chinese literature, I like their films, but also: I've had great difficulty getting my work published in China; very little of it has been published there. The first two attempts to have all of my work published, for instance, were re...

Salman Rushdie

You don't that often see writers being sought out when there are matters of great moment to discuss. And I think that's a loss.

Salman Rushdie

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.

Salman Rushdie

The only thing worse than a bad review from the Ayatollah Khomeini would be a good review from the Ayatollah Khomeini.

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.

Salman Rushdie

Even when things are at their worst, there's a little voice in your head saying, 'Good story!'

Salman Rushdie

The Chinese are good at repression and can be pretty ruthless about it.

Salman Rushdie

I am certainly not a good Muslim. But I am able now to say that I am Muslim; in fact it is a source of happiness to say that I am now inside, and a part of the community whose values have always been closest to my heart.

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.

Salman Rushdie

Vertigo is the conflict between the fear of falling and the desire to fall.

Salman Rushdie

When people do the cowardly thing, it's not about respect, it's about fear.

Salman Rushdie

Someone asked me if I was afraid to write my memoirs. I told him: 'We have to stop drawing up accounts of fear! We live in a society in which people are allowed to tell their story, and that is what I do.'

Salman Rushdie

Sometimes I think that when people become famous, there's a public perception that they are not human beings any more. They don't have feelings; they don't get hurt; you can act and say as you like about them.

Salman Rushdie

Such is the miraculous nature of the future of exiles: what is first uttered in the impotence of an overheated apartment becomes the fate of nations.

Salman Rushdie

I saw Quentin Tarantino's 'Django Unchained,' and you could say a lot of things against it, but it was incredible fun. I don't like blood and gore, and I am very squeamish about violence, but Tarantino's violence is actually funny.

Salman Rushdie

Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.

Salman Rushdie

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...

Salman Rushdie

The difference between memoir and autobiography, as far as I see it, is that a memoir is there primarily to tell one particular story, whereas an autobiography tries to be a full account of a life.

Salman Rushdie

Have you noticed the physical resemblance between Imran Khan and Gaddafi? If you were making a movie of the life of Gaddafi and you wanted a slightly better-looking version of Gaddafi, you might cast Imran Khan.

Salman Rushdie

Author Bio

  • NameSalman Rushdie
  • DescriptionBritish Indian novelist and essayist
  • BornJune 19, 1947
  • CountryIndia
  • ProfessionWriter; Novelist; Essayist
  • AwardsCommandeur Des Arts Et Des Lettres?; Austrian State Prize For European Literature; PEN Pinter Prize; James Tait Black Memorial Prize; Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award