If there is a choice between absolute safety and freedom, then freedom must always prevail. Salman Rushdie More Quotes by Salman Rushdie More Quotes From Salman Rushdie Sometimes great, banned works defy the censor's description and impose themselves on the world - 'Ulysses,' 'Lolita,' the 'Arabian Nights.' Salman Rushdie sometimesnightworld Masks beneath masks until suddenly the bare bloodless skull. Salman Rushdie maskhonestyskulls Friendships are the family we make - not the one we inherit. I've always been someone to whom friendship, elective affinities, is as important as family. Salman Rushdie affinityimportant 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 wantbelieve In the cookie of life, friends are the chocolate chips. Salman Rushdie chipscookieschocolate Religion is responsible for a lot of the problems in the history of the world and it's not something that I practice or recommend, but to each his own. Salman Rushdie practiceinspirationallife Only the foolish, blinded by language's conventions, think of fire as red or gold. Fire is blue at it's melancholy rim, green in it's envious heart. It may burn white, or even, in it's greatest rages, black. Salman Rushdie fireheartthinking The world, somebody wrote, is the place we prove real by dying in it. Salman Rushdie dyingrealworld One of the things a writer is for is to say the unsayable, speak the unspeakable and ask difficult questions. Salman Rushdie difficult-questionsspeakwriting Fundamentalists believe that we don't believe in anything. In their view of the world, they are in possession of absolute certainties, while we are descending into decadence. We will be able to triumph over terrorism not by waging war on it, but through a conscious, fearless way of life. Salman Rushdie viewswarbelieve I have never really thought of myself as a writer about religion. And I think one of the things that happened to me as a result of all that is that I think it did for some people, many people, obscure the kind of writer that I actually am. Salman Rushdie kindpeoplethinking I'm not a prophet, but I always thought it was natural for dictatorships to fall. I remember in 1989, two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, had you said it was going to happen no one would have believed you. The system seemed powerful and unbreakable. Suddenly overnight it blew away like dust. Salman Rushdie wallpowerfulfall But love is what we want, not freedom. Who then is the unluckier man? The beloved, who is given his heart's desire and must for ever after fear its loss, or the free man, with his unlooked-for liberty, naked and alone between the captive armies of the earth? Salman Rushdie armylossheart In writing 'The Satanic Verses,' I think I was writing for the first time from the whole of myself. The English part, the Indian part. The part of me that loves London, and the part that longs for Bombay. And at my typewriter, alone, I could indulge this. Salman Rushdie typewriterswritingthinking A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep. Salman Rushdie namescouragesleep I was living in New York at the time of the 9/11 attacks. And I remember, you know, in those weeks that followed, when none of us spoke about anything else really, a number of friends of mine, people I knew, including very experienced journalists, I heard them saying things like, well, now we understand what happened to you. Salman Rushdie new-yorkremembers-youremember-you What I do think is evident is that those countries in the world where Islamic extremism has recovered the most power, those are also the countries which are most disliked. Salman Rushdie islamiccountrythinking To understand just one life you have to swallow the world ... do you wonder, then, that I was a heavy child? Salman Rushdie lifechildrenworld When a reader falls in love with a book, it leaves its essence inside him, like radioactive fallout in an arable field, and after that there are certain crops that will no longer grow in him, while other, stranger, more fantastic growths may occasionally be produced. Salman Rushdie falling-in-loveessencebook The point is always reached after which the gods no longer share their lives with mortal men and women, they die or wither away or retire... Now that they've gone, the high drama's over. What remains is ordinary human life. Salman Rushdie ordinarydramamen
