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Because I've always felt, whether the fatwa or whatever, the writer's great weapon is the truth and integrity of his voice. And as long as what you're saying is what you truly, honestly believe to be the case, then whatever the consequences, that's fine. That's an honorable position.

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
Voice
Truly
Honorable
Felt
Writer
Weapon
Truth
Cases
Consequences
Great
Fine
Honestly
Long
Position
Consequence
Believe
Saying
Integrity
Always
Whatever
Case
Whether
Weapons
Fatwa

More quotes by Salman Rushdie

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In the movies, the writer is just the servant, the employee.
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Like everybody else, I've had relationships in which I was passionately in love but was completely miserable all the time and didn't trust the person I was in love with one inch.
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We live in an age where the rate of change has been colossal. Colossal. Almost every week there's some transformation of some kind, whether technological or political or scientific, whatever. And I think it's bewildering to human beings to live in a time when they can't take anything as fixed - when everything is shifting and changing all the time.
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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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If a birth is the fall-out from the explosion caused by the union of two unstable elements, then perhaps a half-life is all we can expect.
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But there's one thing we must all be clear about: terrorism is not the pursuit of legitimate goals by some sort of illegitimate means. Whatever the murderers may be trying to achieve, creating a better world certainly isn't one of their goals. Instead they are out to murder innocent people.
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I am clearly vulnerable to these more passionate and volatile unstable relationships. I am trying to not be so vulnerable.
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A man is sane only to the extent that he subscribes to a previously-agreed construction of reality.
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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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Ideas are interesting to me, and religions are a place where ideas have been very subtly embodied for thousands of years. All literature started as sacred literature.
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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.
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How do you defeat terrorism? Don’t be terrorized.
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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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There is nothing like a War for the reinvention of lives.
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Once you put a thought into the world, it can be disagreed with, but it can't be unthought.
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We all owe death a life.
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The mistake of the West was to put the Sauds on the throne of Saudi Arabia and give them control of the world's oil fortune, which they then used to propagate Wahhabi Islam.
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I had a very difficult relationship with my father, which ended up okay, but there were many difficult years.
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The Chinese are good at repression and can be pretty ruthless about it.
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Most of what matters in your life takes place in your absence.
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