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I write books I'd enjoy reading, I'm the reader standing behind my shoulder.

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
Behind
Books
Reading
Enjoy
Shoulder
Write
Shoulders
Book
Standing
Writing
Reader
Behinds

More quotes by Salman Rushdie

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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.
Salman Rushdie
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We have come to think of taking offence as a fundamental right. We value very little more highly than our rage, which gives us, in our opinion, the moral high ground. From there we can shoot down at our enemies and inflict heavy fatalities.
Salman Rushdie
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Free societies...are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best evidence of freedom's existence.
Salman Rushdie
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The response of anybody interested in liberty is that we all have a say and the ability to have an argument is exactly what liberty is, even though it may never be resolved. In any authoritarian society the possessor of power dictates, and if you try and step outside he will come after you.
Salman Rushdie
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I needed my stuff around me, and in that little cocoon I felt good, and I could work.
Salman Rushdie
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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.
Salman Rushdie
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I want to write novels. I want to write stories. I want to do the stuff that I became a writer to do.
Salman Rushdie
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Ignorantly is how we all fall in love for it is a kind of fall. Closing our eyes, we leap from that cliff in hope of a soft landing. Nor is it always soft but still, without that leap nobody comes to life.
Salman Rushdie
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A sigh isn't just a sigh. We inhale the world and breathe out meaning. While we can. While we can.
Salman Rushdie
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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 refused without any reason ever being given.
Salman Rushdie
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Happy endings must come at the end of something,' the Walrus pointed out. 'If they happen in the middle of a story, or an adventure, or the like, all they do is cheer things up for awhile.
Salman Rushdie
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Killing people because you don't like their ideas - it's a bad thing.
Salman Rushdie
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perhaps, if one wishes to remain an individual in the midst of the teeming multitudes, one must make oneself grotesque.
Salman Rushdie
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We are the only animals that tell stories to understand the world we live in.
Salman Rushdie
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Between shame and shamelessness lies the axis upon which we turn meteorological conditions at both these poles are of the most extreme, ferocious type. Shamelessness, shame: the roots of violence.
Salman Rushdie
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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
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I'm not a very big fan of 'Slumdog Millionaire.' I think it's visually brilliant. But I have problems with the story line. I find the storyline unconvincing.
Salman Rushdie
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What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist. Without the freedom to challenge, even to satirize all orthodoxies, it ceases to exist. Language and the imagination cannot be imprisoned, or art will die, and with it, a little of what makes us human.
Salman Rushdie
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Doubt, it seems to me, is the central condition of a human being in the twentieth century.
Salman Rushdie
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I have no problem with people's religious beliefs. I just don't happen to have any.
Salman Rushdie