Quotes from Salman Rushdie

To reflect is to regain a little, lost sense of proportion

O, the conflicting selves jostling and joggling within these bags of skin. No wonder we are unable to remain focused on anything for very long; no wonder we invent remote-control channel-hopping devices. If we turned these instruments upon ourselves we'd discover more channels than a cable or satellite mogul ever dreamed of...

Nathuram Godse. "Thank God," Amina burst out, "it's not a Muslim name!

She was my ground, my favorite sound, my country road, my city street, my sky above, my only love, and the ground beneath my feet

Men on the road together have three choices. They separate, they kill one another, or they work things out.

Shiva and Saleem, victor and victim; understand our rivalry, and you will gain understanding of the age in which you live. (The reverse of this statement is also true.)

There are people who need to impose a shape upon the shapelessness of life. For such people the quest narrative is always attractive. It prevents them from suffering the agony of feeling what's the word. Incoherent.

and here is Nussie's husband, Ismail the lawyer, who has learned an important lesson from his son's forcep-birth: 'Nothing comes out right in life,' he tells his duck of a wife, 'unless it's forced out.

Literature is disputed territory.

You observe … that when it's time to unleash a few insults, a man will always choose his mother tongue.

It matters, it always matters, to name rubbish as rubbish … to do otherwise is to legitimize it. Outside The Whale ( Granta , 1984)

Paul Theroux was sitting in the pew (at Bruce Chatwin's memorial service) behind him. "I suppose we'll be here for you next week, Salman," he said.

This is what I am not: I am not one thing. I contain multitudes.

It is hard for a person of no faith like myself to comprehend the moment when faith dies in the human heart. The kneeling believer who suddenly understands that there is no reason to pray because nobody's listening.

What kind of God is it who's upset by a cartoon in Danish? [Interview with Bill Moyers, Bill Moyers on Faith & Reason , June 23, 2006]

Anybody who's spent any time with machines at all,' he added, 'and baby, that's us all, knows first and foremost there's only one thing certain about them, computer or bicycle. They go wrong.

DüÅŸünce fazlas?yla ac? vermeye baÅŸlad???nda eylem en güzel devad?r.

Ormus liked to compose his own songs up on the flat roof of the apartment block, and spent eternities up there, lost within himself, searching for the points at which his inner life intersected the life of the greater world outside, and calling those points of intersection songs.

This is our tragedy....our fictions are killing us, but if we didn't have those fictions, maybe that would kill us too.

If you walk away from God you should probably try to stay in the good books of Luck.

In the end, everyone can do without fathers

Being God's postman is no fun, yar. Butbutbut: God isn't in this picture. God knows whose postman I've been.

They feared her [the dream beloved], knowing that, being impossible, she was irresistable, and that was why the king loved her best.

to live inside fictions created by untruths or the withholding of actual truths. Maybe human life was truly fictional in this sense, that those who lived it didn't understand it wasn't real.