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Censorship is the thing that stops you doing what you want to do, and what writers want to talk about is what they do, not what stops them doing it.

Salman Rushdie

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Salman Rushdie
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: June 19
Actor
Essayist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Bombay
Rushdie
Joseph Anton
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie
Censorship
Stops
Writers
Talk
Thing

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Even when things are at their worst, there's a little voice in your head saying, 'Good story!'
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Perhaps because my relationship with my father went through such a long, bumpy time, it's been very important for me to work to try to keep lines of communication open between my sons and myself to try to avoid my father's mistakes. At least if you're making mistakes, make different mistakes.
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That's the trouble with you sad-city types: a place has to be miserable and dull as ditchwater before you believe it's real.
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From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.
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Pakistan is alarmed by the rising Indian influence in Afghanistan, and fears that an Afghanistan cleansed of the Taliban would be an Indian client state, thus sandwiching Pakistan between two hostile countries. The paranoia of Pakistan about India's supposed dark machinations should never be underestimated.
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The Republicans were not always insane. They might've had politics I didn't agree with, but they weren't always actually certifiable.
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Many of us didn't believe in the image of bin Laden as a wandering Old Man of the Mountains, living on plants and insects in an inhospitable cave somewhere on the porous Pakistan-Afghan border.
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He would dream of discovering a magic optometrist from whom he would purchase a pair of green-tinged spectacles which would correct his regrettable myopia, and after that he would be able to see through the dense, blinding air to the fabulous world beneath.
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There are two things in Indian history - one is the incredible optimism and potential of the place, and the other is the betrayal of that potential - for example, corruption. Those two strands intertwine through the whole of Indian history, and maybe not just Indian history.
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The First Amendment defends all forms of speech including hate speech, which is why groups like Ku Klux Klan are allowed to utter their poisonous remarks.
Salman Rushdie
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Look at history. It's not the account of a species at peace.
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Normally when I read, I don't like music playing.
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I don't like books that play to the gallery, but I've become more concerned with telling a story as clearly and engagingly as I can.
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Sometimes, people trying to commit suicide manage it in a manner that leaves them breathless with astonishment.
Salman Rushdie
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optimism is a disease
Salman Rushdie
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There's going to be no more compromise on issues where there should not be compromise. Enough with appeasement or apology and mollifying, all that. To hell with all that. I'm just going to fight my corner.
Salman Rushdie
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I do think that there is such a thing as human nature, and that the things that we have in common are perhaps greater than the things that divide us.
Salman Rushdie
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If you're offended, it's your problem.
Salman Rushdie
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English, no longer an English language, now grows from many roots.
Salman Rushdie
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I write books I'd enjoy reading, I'm the reader standing behind my shoulder.
Salman Rushdie