Quotes from Salman Rushdie

Like everybody else, I've had relationships in which I was passionately in love but was completely miserable all the time and didn't trust the person I was in love with one inch.

I'm not saying I am never going to fall in love again, but there is no need to marry.

Bread and books: food for the body and food for the soul - what could be more worthy of our respect, and even love?

I have to say that after some initial resistance, I'm now a complete 'Game of Thrones' addict.

The interesting thing about history sometimes. is that you know these people existed, and you knew what jobs they did, but you don't know much about them as people, so you actually have to make them up.

At the height of the British Empire very few English novels were written that dealt with British power. It's extraordinary that at the moment in which England was the global superpower the subject of British power appeared not to interest most writers.

The whole story of migration and what that has done in interconnecting the planet is obviously something I've written about a lot.

It is often said by religious people that without its framework, there is no sense of right or wrong. My view is that religion comes after ethics.

Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanation, have wrought havoc among mere mixed-up human beings.

A thing that happens to migrants is that they lose many of the traditional things which root identity, which root the self.

The time-honored role of the artist [is] to speak truth to power.

India is my kid sister.

Acting was always my unscratched itch, when I was in college and even afterwards.

In today's U.S., it's possible for almost anyone - women, gays, African-Americans, Jews - to run for, and be elected to, high office.

I don't feel American. I do feel like a New Yorker. I think there's a real distinction there. A city allows you to become a citizen even when you're not a national.

If I were dead, then nobody in England would have to fuss about the cost of my security and whether or not I merited such special treatment for so long.

If you look at Indian movies, every time they wanted an exotic locale, they would have a dance number in Kashmir. Kashmir was India's fairyland. Indians went there because in a hot country you go to a cold place. People would be entranced by the sight of snow.

There needs to be a thorough examination, by Muslims everywhere, of why it is that the faith they love breeds so many violent mutant strains.

My love for Dan Brown knows no bounds. It literally has no mass.

If love is a yearning to be like (even to become) the beloved, then hatred, it must be said, can be engendered by the same ambition, when it cannot be fulfilled.

One either loves, or waits for love, or banishes love for good. That is the full range of possible choices.

Certainly, poverty and economic decline have a lot to do with the so-called rage of Islam. You've got all these young men in countries which are economically in bad shape. The idea that they might be able to make a good living and get married and have a family, a decent life, seems very remote to a lot of people in a lot of the world.

Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.

If you live in free countries, you don't have to spend all your life arguing about freedom because it is all around you. It seems redundant to make a lot of noise about something when, in fact, there it is. But if someone tries to remove it, it becomes important for you to formulate your own defenses of it.