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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.

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
Believe
Borders
Laden
Men
Plant
Caves
Somewhere
Insects
Image
Border
Inhospitable
Mountain
Pakistan
Porous
Living
Plants
Afghan
Didn
Mountains
Cave
Many
Wander
Wandering

More quotes by Salman Rushdie

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Speaking as somebody with three sisters and a very largely female Muslim family, there is not a single woman I know in my family or in their friends who would have accepted the wearing of a veil.
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I don't know what to say about literary critics. I think it's probably best to say nothing.
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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.
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We must agree on what matters: kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches, disagreement, cutting-edge fashion, literature, generosity, water, a more equitable distribution of the world's resources, movies, music, freedom of thought, beauty, love.
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I have to say that after some initial resistance, I'm now a complete 'Game of Thrones' addict.
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Two things form the bedrock of any open society - freedom of expression and rule of law. If you don't have those things, you don't have a free country.
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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?
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The Christian Coalition is still about Christianity, even if it's an idea of Christianity that many Christians might not go along with.
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People would come and threaten them. And they would respond by putting the book in the window. Behind that, the publishers, many of whom were menaced and receiving anonymous phone calls of the very menacing kind and so, almost everybody - not everybody, but almost everybody held the line.
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As I look back, I feel a touch of pride at my younger self's dedication to literature, which gave him the strength of mind to resist the blandishments of the enemies of promise. The sirens of ad-land sang sweetly and seductively, but I thought of Odysseus lashing himself to the mast of his ship, and somehow stayed on course.
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YouTube is full of pieces of trash. If you want to look on YouTube and find something that insults you, you can probably find it.
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Even the Islam stuff I thought was pretty respectful about Islam in a funny way. I mean, yes, from a secular point of view, but it talks about the birth of this religion, and I thought it was pretty admiring of the person at the center of it, the prophet of Islam.
Salman Rushdie
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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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I hate admitting that my enemies have a point.
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I don't think I've ever quite grown out of it, actually. There was a point where I could recite some of those Elvish verses - which I've mercifully forgotten. But I can still, if really pushed, recite the text of the inside of the ruling ring in the language of Mordor.
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Make as much racket as you like people. Noise is life and an excess of noise is a sign that life is good. There will be time for us all to be quiet when we are safely dead.
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I'm not a prophet, but I always thought it was natural for dictatorships to fall. I remember in 1989, two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, had you said it was going to happen no one would have believed you. The system seemed powerful and unbreakable. Suddenly overnight it blew away like dust.
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Mo Yan is the Chinese equivalent of the Soviet Russian apparatchik writer Mikhail Sholokhov: a patsy of the regime.
Salman Rushdie
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A man who invents himself needs someone to believe in him... Not only the need to be believed in, but the need to believe in another. You've got it: Love.
Salman Rushdie
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I've never had very high regard for therapists. I owe my health, my mental survival, to my friends and loved ones.
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