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Unfortunately, the problem of the free speech argument is that you have to defend people you can't stand.

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
Unfortunately
Defend
Argument
Speech
Stand
Free
Problem
People

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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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Human beings, you see, do absolutely two primary things. We see like and unlike. Like becomes, in literature, simile and metaphor. Unlike becomes uniqueness and difference, from which I believe, the novel is born.
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Writers have an opinion about the world and offer arguments about the world. They should offer contemplation.
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Your blasphemy, Salman, can't be forgiven. To set your words against the Words of God.
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For a fellow who's not to much to look at, you have the instincts of a champion.
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What's the use of stories that aren't even true?
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The Koran was revealed at a time of great change in the Arab world, the seventh-century shift from a matriarchal nomadic culture to an urban patriarchal system.
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You can't assume if you do something contentious that people will be on your side. The moment violence enters the story, the story changes. Then the question is, How do you face up to violence? And then you have to have a no-compromise position. And this is quite simply a lesson we learn in the school playground.
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I always thought storytelling was like juggling [...] You keep a lot of different tales in the air, and juggle them up and down, and if you're good you don't drop any.
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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.
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American literature has always been immigrant.
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I discovered that if you find the language to talk to younger readers, children can accept anything.
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When you throw everything up in the air anything becomes possible.
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Sometimes writing a novel is not unlike having a baby. You'd have to ask a female novelist to compare the pain.
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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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Madame Bovary and a flying carpet, they are both untrue in the same way. Somebody made them up.
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If there is a choice between absolute safety and freedom, then freedom must always prevail.
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All my adult life, if I didn't have several hours a day to sit in a room by myself, I would get antsy and irritable.
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Normally when I read, I don't like music playing.
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I think the veil is a way of taking power away from women.
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