The First Amendment defends all forms of speech including hate speech, which is why groups like Ku Klux Klan are allowed to utter their poisonous remarks. Salman Rushdie More Quotes by Salman Rushdie More Quotes From Salman Rushdie It's difficult not to color our perception of author's product with his personality. There are so many examples of this. What do we think of Ezra Pound - clearly a great poet and clearly kind of an asshole? You can say the same thing about Louis-Ferdinand Céline, who clearly was a Nazi sympathizer, and yet one of the great writers of the 20th century. It is tough, but there are enough examples around where we have to somehow find a way of separating the work from the artist and seeing what there is to see in the work, while also condemning the thoughts we see in the man. Salman Rushdie artist men thinking Fundamentalists of all faiths are the fundamental evil of our time. Salman Rushdie our-time fundamentals evil When you're writing for the screen, you have to be hyper-conscious every moment of how the audience is going to react. If you write just one scene where the audience is confused or it breaks their concentration in some way, then you've lost them, and you might never get them back. Salman Rushdie confused writing might If you were standing next to the prophet on the mountain, would you have seen the archangel? And my answer to that was probably not, even though it's supposed to be a really big archangel. He describes it as - the Archangel Gabriel as standing on the horizon and filling the sky. That's a big angel. Salman Rushdie mountain angel sky One of the characteristics of mudslinging is that mud sticks if it's thrown with enough force for long enough. Salman Rushdie mud sticks long A man is sane only to the extent that he subscribes to a previously-agreed construction of reality. Salman Rushdie construction men reality A photograph is a moral decision taken in one eighth of a second, or one sixteenth, or one one-hundred-and-twenty-eighth. Snap your fingers; a snapshot's faster. Salman Rushdie twenties taken decision A figure of speech is a shifty thing; it can be twisted or it can be straight. Salman Rushdie twisted speech figures There is a point beyond which conciliation looks like capitulation. I do not believe I passed that point, but others have thought otherwise. Salman Rushdie capitulation believe looks People don't like being around despair. Our tolerance for the truly hopeless, for those who are irredeemably broken by life is strictly limited. The sob stories we like are the ones that end before we're bored. Salman Rushdie bored broken people ...in words and pickles, I have immortalized my memories, although distortions are inevitable in both methods. We must live, I'm afraid, with the shadows of imperfections. Salman Rushdie imperfection shadow memories He had picked up languages the way most sailors pick up diseases; languages were his gonorrhoea, his syphilis, his scurvy, his ague, his plague. Salman Rushdie syphilis disease way Meaning is a shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood injuries, newspaper articles, chance remarks, old fillms, small victories, people hated, people loved; perhaps it is because our sense of what is the case is constructed from such inadequate materials that we defend it so fiercely, even to death. Salman Rushdie childhood victory people That's the trouble with you sad-city types: a place has to be miserable and dull as ditchwater before you believe it's real. Salman Rushdie real cities believe 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. Salman Rushdie silence names dream Things, even people have a way of leaking into each other like flavours when you cook. Salman Rushdie flavour people way One either loves, or waits for love, or banishes love for good. That is the full range of possible choices. Salman Rushdie range choices waiting Don't you know girls have to fool people every day of their lives if they want to get anywhere? Salman Rushdie girl want people The liveliness of literature lies in its exceptionality, in being the individual, idiosyncratic vision of one human being, in which, to our delight and great surprise, we may find our own vision reflected. Salman Rushdie delight vision lying The history of life was not the bumbling progress - the very English, middle-class progress - Victorian thought had wanted it to be, but violent, a thing of dramatic, cumulative transformations: in the old formulation, more revolution than evolution. Salman Rushdie history-of-life progress class
