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The only privilege literature deserves - and this privilege it requires in order to exist - is the privilege of being in the arena of discourse, the place where the struggle of our languages can be acted out.

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
Requires
Deserve
Exist
Acted
Struggle
Languages
Literature
Deserves
Language
Arena
Order
Discourse
Place
Privilege

More quotes by Salman Rushdie

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She's no flibberti-gibberti mamzell, but a whir-stir-get-lost-sir bundla dynamite!
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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.
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The liveliness of literature lies in its exceptionality, in being the individual, idiosyncratic vision of one human being, in which, to our delight and great surprise, we may find our own vision reflected.
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I'm not a big fan of there being voiceovers in movies. I really prefer it when the film tells it story.
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Sometimes when you finish a book, you don't know quite what you've got.
Salman Rushdie
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Friendships are the family we make - not the one we inherit. I've always been someone to whom friendship, elective affinities, is as important as family.
Salman Rushdie
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Don't you know girls have to fool people every day of their lives if they want to get anywhere?
Salman Rushdie
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You start at the stupid end of the book, and if you're lucky you finish at the smart end.
Salman Rushdie
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I seem to have fallen for women with missing parents. Goodness knows what it signifies.
Salman Rushdie
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[My work] is a love song to our mongrel selves.
Salman Rushdie
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Dissensions between Muslim nations run at least as deep, if not deeper, than those nations' resentment of the West.
Salman Rushdie
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But I - and I just think it's very - one of the problems of defending the extraordinary principle of freedom of speech is that you have to defend freedom of speech for people like that too.
Salman Rushdie
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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.
Salman Rushdie
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What's the use of stories that aren't even true?
Salman Rushdie
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Religion is responsible for a lot of the problems in the history of the world and it's not something that I practice or recommend, but to each his own.
Salman Rushdie
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There is a widespread difficulty in the Muslim world, which has to do with how the people are taught about examining their own history. A whole range of stuff has been placed off limits.
Salman Rushdie
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To understand just one life you have to swallow the world ... do you wonder, then, that I was a heavy child?
Salman Rushdie
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In an ideal world, you could reunite the Pakistan-occupied part of Kashmir with the Indian-occupied part and restore the old borders. You could have both India and Pakistan agreeing to guarantee those borders, demilitarise the area, and to invest in it economically. In a sane world that would happen, but we don't live in a sane world.
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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There is nothing like a War for the reinvention of lives.
Salman Rushdie