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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
Problem
People
Unfortunately
Defend
Argument
Speech
Stand
Free

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One of the things a writer is for is to say the unsayable, speak the unspeakable and ask difficult questions.
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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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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.
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It just requires so much of you, and most of the time you feel dumb.
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If there is a choice between absolute safety and freedom, then freedom must always prevail.
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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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What kind of Christmas present would Jesus ask Santa for?
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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.
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You can't have modern states based on ideas which have been out of date for a thousand years.
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Khattam-Shud,' he said slowly, 'is the Arch-Enemy of all Stories, even of language itself. He is the Prince of Silence and the Foe of Speech. And because everything ends, because dreams end, stories end, life ends, at the finish of everything we use his name. It's finished, we tell one another, it's over. Khattam-Shud: The End.
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I write books I'd enjoy reading, I'm the reader standing behind my shoulder.
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I do think of Bombay as my hometown. Those are the streets I walked when I was learning to walk. And it's the place that my imagination has returned to more than anywhere else.
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I've never rejected the world I came from. To be rejected by it is horrible.
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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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We are the storytelling animal.
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I for one don't need a supreme sacred arbiter in order to be a moral being.
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In this world without quiet corners, there can be no easy escapes from history, from hullabaloo, from terrible, unquiet fuss.
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When you know what you're against you have taken the first step to discovering what you're for.
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Broad-mindedness is related to tolerance open-mindedness is the sibling of peace.
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I don't think there is a need for an entity like God in my life.
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