Quotes from Salman Rushdie

She, whose life had blown up, emptying her of history and leaving in its place only that dark dream of majesty, that illusion so powerful that it demanded to enter the sphere of what-was-real - she, rootless Bilquis, who now longed for stability, for no-more-explosions, had discerned in Raza a boulder-like quality on which she would build her life. He was a man rooted solidly in an indeflectible sense of himself, and that made him seem invincible.

Human beings who turn away from God lose love, and certainty

many of us, as immigrants—or our parents or our grandparents—had chosen to leave our pasts behind just as the Goldens were now choosing, encouraging our children to speak English, not the old language from the old country: to speak, dress, act, be American.

The old man heard the music of the imperialists issuing from the golden hotel, heavy with the gaiety of despair...

I was born in the city of Bombay … once upon a time. No, that won't do, there's no getting away from the date: I was born in Doctor Narlikar's Nursing Home on August 15th, 1947. And the time? The time matters, too. Well then: at night. No, it's important to be more … On the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact. Clock-hands joined palms in respectful greeting as I came.

I am being flayed,' he told her in his dream. 'It is my holy calling. We will never gain our humanity until we lose our skins.

Voltaire had once said that it was a good idea for a writer to live near an international frontier so that, if he angered powerful men, he could skip across the border and be safe. Voltaire

The disgrace of your barrenness, Madam, is not yours alone. Don't you know that shame is collective? The shame of any one of us sits on us all and bends our backs. See what you're doing to your husband's people, how you repay the ones who took you in when you came penniless and a fugitive from that godless country over there.

Beware! the tower said. You are entering the realm of the Elephant King, a sovereign so rich in pachyderms that he can waste the gnashers of a thousand of the beasts just to decorate me.

Stories should be like life, slightly frayed at the edges, full of loose ends and lives juxtaposed by accident rather than some grand design. Most of life has no meaning--so it must surely be a distortion of life to tell tales in which every single element is meaningful?

His mother had survived decades of marriage to his angry, disappointed, alcoholic father by developing what she called a "forgettery" instead of a memory. She woke up every day and forgot the day before.

All true believers have good reasons for disbelieving in every god except their own," said Birbal, "and so it is they who, between them, give me all the reasons for believing in none." The first minister and the emperor were standing at

The ice is always waiting, Aadam baba, just under the water's skin

I disapprove of certainties, said Virgil Jones. They limit one's range of vision. Doubt is one aspect of width.

Kinder machen sich Phantasievorstellungen von ihren Vätern, formen sie sich nach ihren kindlichen Bedürfnissen. Die Realität eines Vaters ist eine Last, die nur wenige Söhne zu tragen vermögen.

Sometimes he thinks the walls are throbbing, as if the water-stained concrete has developed a tic, and then he allows himself to close his eyelids which are as heavy as iron shields, so that he can tell himself who he is.

The trouble with the English was that they were English: damn cold fish! - Living underwater most of the year, in days the colour of night!

Had he, as a child, intuited something and then, afraid of what he had guessed, buried the intuition so deep that he retained no memory of it? And could books, some books, gain access to those hidden chambers and use what they found there?

Dr Faustus sacrificed eternity in return for two dozen years of power; the writer agrees to the ruination of his life, and gains (but only if he's lucky) maybe not eternity, but posterity, at least.

by your example you have taught me kindness, and shown me that it expands to include all people, not only the true believers but the unbelievers and other-believers also, not only the virtuous but also those who know not virtue

Some echo, no doubt, of the great silence with which her own mother had tormented Aadam Aziz lingered in her ears—because silence, too, has an echo, hollower and longer-lasting than the reverberations of any sound

What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name? How well, with what fatal results, religion erects totems, and how willing we are to kill for them! And when we've done it often enough, the deadening of affect that results makes it easier to do it again. So India's problem turns out to be the world's problem. What happened in India has happened in God's name. The problem's name is God.

I think it's legitimate for a work of art made in the present time to say, we are being crippled by the culture we have made, by its most popular elements above all', he replied. 'And by stupidity and ignorant and bigotry, yes'.

He ate breakfast like a savage: quantities of leavened bread, chunks of cheese made from cows' milk, and coffee drowned in cows' milk too, which he called galão – things that no right-minded person would eat at the beginning of the day.)