Salman Rushdie: I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very y...

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.

Salman Rushdie

honesty expression integrity

Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, to rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.

Salman Rushdie

storytelling stories thinking

The only people who see the whole picture,' he murmured, 'are the ones who step out of the frame.

Salman Rushdie

whole steps people

Perhaps the story you finish is never the one you begin.

Salman Rushdie

stories

Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today. I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity. 'Respect for religion' has become a code phrase meaning 'fear of religion.' Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.

Salman Rushdie

real religious art

If somebody's trying to shut you up, sing louder, and if possible, better.

Salman Rushdie

ifs trying

To be born again,' sang Gibreal Farishta tumbling from the heaveans, 'first you have to die. Ho ji! Ho ji! To land upon the bosomy earth, first one needs to fly Tat-taa! Takatun! How to ever smile again, if first you won't cry? How to win the darling's love mister, without a sigh?

Salman Rushdie

land winning needs

Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.

Salman Rushdie

novelists communication courage

For every snake, there is a ladder; for every ladder,a snake

Salman Rushdie

ladders snakes

We cannot allow religious hooligans to place limiting points on thought.

Salman Rushdie

religious

Where there is no belief, there is no blasphemy.

Salman Rushdie

blasphemy belief

Even when things are at their worst, there's a little voice in your head saying, 'Good story!'

Salman Rushdie

voice stories littles

God, Satan, Paradise, and Hell all vanished one day in my fifteenth year, when I quite abruptly lost my faith. ... and afterwards, to prove my new-found atheism, I bought myself a rather tasteless ham sandwich, and so partook for the first time of the forbidden flesh of the swine. No thunderbolt arrived to strike me down. ... From that day to this I have thought of myself as a wholly secular person.

Salman Rushdie

atheism years religion

Of course, there is nothing intrinsic linking any religion with any act of violence. The crusades don't prove that Christianity was violent. The Inquisition doesn't prove that Christianity tortures people. But that Christianity did torture people.

Salman Rushdie

violence christianity people

‘Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.

Salman Rushdie

inspirational life ideas

In an ideal world, you could reunite the Pakistan-occupied part of Kashmir with the Indian-occupied part and restore the old borders. You could have both India and Pakistan agreeing to guarantee those borders, demilitarise the area, and to invest in it economically. In a sane world that would happen, but we don't live in a sane world.

Salman Rushdie

india-and-pakistan kashmir borders

Memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else's version more than his own.

Salman Rushdie

special memories reality

Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be bloody-minded. Argue with the world. And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things--childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves--that go on slipping , like sand, through our fingers.

Salman Rushdie

stars dream writing

No, I don't think it's fair to label Islam 'violent.' But I will say that to my knowledge, no writer has ever gone into hiding for criticizing the Amish.

Salman Rushdie

islam labels thinking

faith without doubt is addiction

Salman Rushdie

addiction doubt

I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a bad rap from history, and that he was actually a person quite unlike what we now think of as Machiavellian. He was a republican. He disliked totalitarian government.