Quotes from Salman Rushdie

No people whose word for 'yesterday' is the same as their word for 'tomorrow' can be said to have a firm grip on the time.

faith without doubt is addiction

Realism can break a writer's heart.

Children are the vessels into which adults pour their poison.

What can't be cured must be endured.

The world, somebody wrote, is the place we prove real by dying in it.

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.

Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.

I used to say, 'There is a God-shaped hole in me.' For a long time I stressed the absence, the hole. Now I find it is the shape which has become more important.

Fundamentalists of all faiths are the fundamental evil of our time.

Very often, people who actually pick up a book of mine for the first time are kind of surprised. And I get these letters saying, well, who knew that you were good, you know?

Every time you finish a book, you have a terrible feeling that there's just never going to be another one. But fortunately, so far, the next one has always shown up.

In the experience of art, time seems not to exist. When I'm writing and think, "I've been working for two hours," I've actually been working for seven.

Our lives teach us who we are." I have learned the hard way that when you permit anyone else's description of reality to supplant your own ... then you might as well be dead.

Many writers who have had to deal with the subject of atrocity can't face it head-on.

Bin Laden was born filthy rich and died in a rich man's house, which he had painstakingly built to the highest specifications.

Sometimes great, banned works defy the censor's description and impose themselves on the world - 'Ulysses,' 'Lolita,' the 'Arabian Nights.'

I've never seen anywhere in the world as beautiful as Kashmir. It has something to do with the fact that the valley is very small and the mountains are very big, so you have this miniature countryside surrounded by the Himalayas, and it's just spectacular. And it's true, the people are very beautiful too.

Broad-mindedness is related to tolerance; open-mindedness is the sibling of peace.

We live in a frightened time, and people self-censor all the time and are afraid of going into some subjects because they are worried about violent reactions.

It just requires so much of you, and most of the time you feel dumb.

The Koran was revealed at a time of great change in the Arab world, the seventh-century shift from a matriarchal nomadic culture to an urban patriarchal system.

If Turkey wants to join Europe, it will have to become a European country, and that might take a long time.

I'm a reader of Chinese literature, I like their films, but also: I've had great difficulty getting my work published in China; very little of it has been published there. The first two attempts to have all of my work published, for instance, were refused without any reason ever being given.