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In the end, you write the book that grabs you by the throat and demands to be written.

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
Written
Write
Ends
Book
Writing
Grabs
Throat
Demands
Demand

More quotes by Salman Rushdie

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India, the new myth--a collective fiction in which anything was possible, a fable rivalled only by the two other mighty fantasies: money and God.
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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Things, even people have a way of leaking into each other like flavours when you cook.
Salman Rushdie
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We were language's magpies by nature, stealing whatever sounded bright and shiny.
Salman Rushdie
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Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today.
Salman Rushdie
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Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanation, have wrought havoc among mere mixed-up human beings.
Salman Rushdie
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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.
Salman Rushdie
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Peace, perfect peace, in this dark world of sin? The Blood of Jesus whispers peace within.
Salman Rushdie
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I get a lot of letters - a lot of letters saying, who knew that you were funny?
Salman Rushdie
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You don't fight radical conservatism with not-quite-so radical conservatism.
Salman Rushdie
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Human beings do not perceive things whole we are not gods but wounded creatures, cracked lenses, capably only of fractured perceptions. Partial beings, in all the senses of that phrase.
Salman Rushdie
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I think it's a very important function of art to challenge accepted reality, especially when that reality is created by powerful interest groups.
Salman Rushdie
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The real risks for any artist are taken in pushing the work to the limits of what is possible, in the attempt to increase the sum of what it is possible to think. Books become good when they go to this edge and risk falling over it -when they endanger the artist by reason of what he has, or has not, artistically dared.
Salman Rushdie
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I discovered that if you find the language to talk to younger readers, children can accept anything.
Salman Rushdie
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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.
Salman Rushdie
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You can't judge an internal injury by the size of the hole.
Salman Rushdie
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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.
Salman Rushdie
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The PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award is a way of spotlighting individual cases. If you look at the history of the award, the freedom rate is very high: a very high percentage of people who receive those awards are freed in the next six months to a year. The only weapon there is attention, but interestingly it works.
Salman Rushdie
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From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.
Salman Rushdie
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One of the things I've learnt is not to depend on there being a woman in your life to make it work. I love my work, I love my children, I've got wonderful friends, you know, I have a nice life.
Salman Rushdie