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I don't dictate to anyone what to believe and what not to. And I don't want that to be dictated to me either.

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
Dictated
Dictate
Either
Anyone
Believe

More quotes by Salman Rushdie

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There was a series called 'Game of Thrones' which was very popular here in the United States, a post-Tolkien kind of thing. It was garbage, yet very addictive garbage - because there's lots of violence, all the women take their clothes off all the time, and it's kind of fun.
Salman Rushdie
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Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long. It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it to, in the case of literature, its readers to be, for a secular, materialist culture, some sort of replacement for what the love of god offers in the world of faith.
Salman Rushdie
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I think people direct good films when they feel personal to them, not because it's a famous book or something. It has to something move over that and somehow become personal to the director.
Salman Rushdie
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I don't like books that play to the gallery, but I've become more concerned with telling a story as clearly and engagingly as I can.
Salman Rushdie
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Bread and books: food for the body and food for the soul - what could be more worthy of our respect, and even love?
Salman Rushdie
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I would argue that religion comes from a desire to get to the questions of, 'Where do we come from?' and 'How shall we live?' And I would say I don't need religion to answer those questions.
Salman Rushdie
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I know who I am, I know what I'm for, and I know what I'm willing to fight for.
Salman Rushdie
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I grew up falling in love with kind of story, amazing, wonder tale of the East, which if you're a child growing up in India is all around you.And I think one of the gifts it gave me as a writer was this early knowledge that stories are not true.
Salman Rushdie
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I always thought the front line was the bookstores. And bookstores around America, around the world did astonishingly well. They held the line. They didn't chicken out. You know, they defended the book. They kept it in the front of the store.
Salman Rushdie
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The question I'm always asking myself is: are we masters or victims? Do we make history, or does history make us? Do we shape the world, or are we just shaped by it? The question of do we have agency in our lives or whether we are just passive victims of events is, I think, a great question, and one that I have always tried to ask.
Salman Rushdie
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It's always been colossally important to me that my books should be well received in India. It's where I come from.
Salman Rushdie
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A mature society understands that at the heart of democracy is argument.
Salman Rushdie
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I am clearly vulnerable to these more passionate and volatile unstable relationships. I am trying to not be so vulnerable.
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.
Salman Rushdie
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What happened in Pakistan was that people were told: You're all Muslim, so now you're a country. As we saw in 1971 with the Bangladesh secession, the answer to that was: 'Oh no, we're not.'
Salman Rushdie
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It's obvious that I come down on the side of free speech for anybody's work.
Salman Rushdie
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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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I have been a film buff all my life and believe that the finest cinema is fully the equal of the best novels.
Salman Rushdie
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Vertigo is the conflict between the fear of falling and the desire to fall.
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