Salman Rushdie: I used to say, 'There is a God-shaped hole in me.' For...

Vulnerability of artists is definitely what makes organizations like PEN necessary because, as I tried to argue, the actual work that writers and artists do has an ornery way of surviving. Particularly in this age of the internet, it is very easy for forbidden work to be found online somewhere if you know where to look. Artists themselves, however, are in increasing danger, and not just artists. The great concern is that year after year, rising numbers of journalists are being killed in pursuit of their work.

Salman Rushdie

artist age arguing

And at the end of the day, there was an attempt to suppress a book. The book wasn't suppressed. It's freely available in whatever it is, close to 50 languages. There was an attempt to suppress the writer. And I'm happy to say the writer wasn't suppressed.

Salman Rushdie

the-end-of-the-day language book

The world is full of things that upset people. But most of us deal with it and move on and don't try and burn the planet down.

Salman Rushdie

upset people moving

If you want to tell the untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got to find a language. Which goes for film as well as prose, for documentary as well as autobiography. Use the wrong language, and you're dumb and blind.

Salman Rushdie

voice dumb giving

Look at history. It's not the account of a species at peace.

Salman Rushdie

accounts species looks

And using that - the birth of a religion, it suggests that you have got two tests. You have the test of weakness. When you're weak, do you compromise, do you bend, do you give in, do you accommodate? And then the test of strength. When you're strong, are you merciful, are you generous, or are you cruel?

Salman Rushdie

strong giving two

If you want to be a serious writer, then you have to write what there is to write about. If you're going to pull your punches and second-guess yourself and not do things because you're worried, then don't write. Stay home and do something else.

Salman Rushdie

want home writing

People would come and threaten them. And they would respond by putting the book in the window. Behind that, the publishers, many of whom were menaced and receiving anonymous phone calls of the very menacing kind and so, almost everybody - not everybody, but almost everybody held the line.

Salman Rushdie

phones book people

I seem to have fallen for women with missing parents. Goodness knows what it signifies.

Salman Rushdie

goodness parent missing

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.

Salman Rushdie

years ideas interesting

One of the things I know from the study of history is that history surprises you. History is not written. It's not inevitable.The victory of evil is not certain.

Salman Rushdie

victory study evil

I for one don't need a supreme "sacred" arbiter in order to be a moral being.

Salman Rushdie

sacred order needs

When you know what you're against you have taken the first step to discovering what you're for.

Salman Rushdie

taken steps firsts

Nobody wants to read a 600 page book in which the author is fabulous throughout.

Salman Rushdie

pages want book

'The Satanic Verses' was denied the ordinary life of a novel. It became something smaller and uglier: an insult.

Salman Rushdie

satanic insult ordinary

The problem of telling contemporary history is that your message gets outdated.

Salman Rushdie

outdated problem messages

Our lives are not what we deserve; they are, let us agree, in many ways deficient.

Salman Rushdie

our-lives agree way

It doesn't matter whether characters are real people or not; if they're not vivid on the page, then the reader doesn't care about them that much, and, if the reader doesn't care about them that much, then they don't care what happens to them.

Salman Rushdie

real character people

I am on Facebook, but mainly as a way to spy on my children. I find out more about them from their Facebook pages than from what they tell me.

Salman Rushdie

spy pages children

$She saw him fracture into rainbow colors through the prism of her... by Salman Rushdie$

She saw him fracture into rainbow colors through the prism of her love.

Salman Rushdie

rainbow saws color

I used to say, 'There is a God-shaped hole in me.' For a long time I stressed the absence, the hole. Now I find it is the shape which has become more important.