Quotes from Salman Rushdie

She allowed history to leave her without trying to hold it back, the way children allow a grand parade to pass, holding it in their memory, making it an unforgettable thing, making it their own

AS I PLAN MY QUEST," Quichotte said, drinking from a can of ginger ale, "I ponder the contemporary period as well as the classical. And by the contemporary I mean, of course, The Bachelorette.

because it is the privilige and the curse of midnight's children to be both masters and victims of their times, to forsake privacy and be sucked into the annihilating whirlpool of the multitudes, and to be unable to live or die in peace.

I am by nature an inward man, he said silently into the disconnected phone. I have struggled, in my fashion, to find my way towards an appreciation of the high things, towards a small measure of fineness. On good days I felt it was within my grasp, somewhere within me, somewhere within. But it eluded me. I have become embroiled, in things, in the world and in its messes, and I cannot resist. The grotesque has me, as before the quotidian had me, in its thrall

Rage made you the creature of those who enraged you, it gave them to much power. Rage killed the mind...

The city of Jahilia is built entirely of sand, its structures formed of the desert whence it rises. It is a sight to wonder at: walled, four-gated, the whole of it a miracle worked by its citizens, who have learned the trick of transforming the fine white dune-sand of those forsaken parts, - the very stuff of inconstancy, - the quintessence of unsettlement, shifting, treachery, lack-of-form, - and have turned it, by alchemy, into the fabric of their newly invented permanence.

A little thinking is a dangerous thing.

Morality came before religion, and religion was our ancestors' way of responding to that built-in need. And if that was so, then it was perfectly possible to lead a good life, to have a strong sense of right and wrong, without ever letting God and his harpies into the room.

Unhappy endings might seem more realistic than happy ones, but reality often contained a streak of fantasy that realism lacked.

Mahound comes to me for revelation, asking me to choose between monotheist and henotheist alternatives, and I'm just some idiot actor having a bhaenchud nightmare, what the fuck do I know, yaar, what to tell you, help. Help.

Por última vez en la vida se preguntó si había malgastado su amor en una mujer que solo daba su amor hasta que llegaba el momento de retirarlo. Apartó el pensamiento de su cabeza. Había entregado su corazón esta única vez en la vida y se consideraba afortunado de haber tenido ocasión de hacerlo. La cuestión de si ella era digna de su amor carecía de sentido. Su corazón había contestado a esa pregunta hacía mucho tiempo

Nothing but trouble outside my head; nothing but miracles inside it.

love is an emotion that recognizes itself in others.

The ancient wisdoms are modern nonsenses. Live in your own time, use what we know, and as you grow up, perhaps the human race will finally grow up with you and put aside childish things.

We look at the galaxy and fall in love, but the universe cares less about us than we do about it, and the stars stay in their courses however much we may wish upon them to do otherwise. It's true that if you watch the sky-wheel turn for a while you'll see a meteor fall, flame and die. That's not a star worth following; it's just an unlucky rock. Our fates are here on earth. There are no guiding stars.

Midnight has many children; the offspring of Independence were not all human. Violence, corruption, poverty, generals, chaos, greed and pepperpot… I had to go into exile to learn that the children of midnight were more varied that I— even I—had dreamed.

After they stopped torturing him they locked him in the jail cell again and pretended they would forget him... Then, eventually, and unexpectedly, release. Into ignominy, oblivion, married life.

In death do triumph and failure humbly meet. We learn far less from victory than from defeat.

The world is not ideas, rich kid, the world is things. If you have things, you have time to dream, if you don't... You'll fight.

Human life was rarely shapely, only intermittently meaningful, its clumsiness the inevitable consequence of the victory of content over form, of what and when over how and why.

There is a thing that lives in us, eating our food, breathing our air, looking out through our eyes, and when it comes out to play nobody is immune; possessed, we turn murderously upon one another, thing-darkness in our eyes and real weapons in our hands, neighbour against thing-ridden neighbour, thing-driven cousin against cousin, brother-thing against brother-thing, thing-child against thing-child.

You are ass and I like class. I like diamonds, you are a glass. You brown mouse, I like black cats. You boy pussy but i like tom cats. Just because you got the dance, don't think you stand a fucking chance.

The human race is a life sentence...it's a rough confinement, and sometimes we all need to break out of jail.

If power was a a cry, then human lives were lived in the echo of the cries of others.