Quotes from Salman Rushdie

Terror is glamour - not only, but also. I am firmly convinced that there's something like a fascination with death among suicide bombers.

I hate admitting that my enemies have a point.

The reason why books endure is because there are enough people who like them. It's the only reason why books last.

This is going to make me sound ancient, but I remember Juhu Beach when there weren't any buildings on it. You'd go through countryside and arrive at this amazing beach. I remember driving from Delhi to the Qutab Minar through countryside. Mehrauli was a little village - that's all gone.

I saw Quentin Tarantino's 'Django Unchained,' and you could say a lot of things against it, but it was incredible fun. I don't like blood and gore, and I am very squeamish about violence, but Tarantino's violence is actually funny.

There was a series called 'Game of Thrones' which was very popular here in the United States, a post-Tolkien kind of thing. It was garbage, yet very addictive garbage - because there's lots of violence, all the women take their clothes off all the time, and it's kind of fun.

It's one thing to say, 'I don't like what you said to me and I find it rude and offensive,' but the moment you threaten violence in return, you've taken it to another level, where you lose whatever credibility you had.

There is nothing intrinsic linking any religion with any act of violence. The crusades don't prove that Christianity was violent. The Inquisition doesn't prove that Christianity tortures people. But that Christianity did torture people.

One of the strange things about violent and authoritarian regimes is they don't like the glare of negative publicity.

Mourn for the living, the dead have got their camphor gardens.

Vertigo is the conflict between the fear of falling and the desire to fall.

In general, writers shouldn't be killed for what they write, though I can think of exceptions.

If you have children, you worry about the world you're leaving them.

It may be that the books that were best liked in your lifetime are not the ones that are best liked 100 years later.

I think the book is less emotional than the film. With the film, the emotions are much more raw and in front. In the book, they are kind of ironized and seen through comedy.

faith without doubt is addiction

Question: What is the opposite of faith? Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself is a kind of belief. Doubt.

You can adhere to your faith, but that faith needs to march in line with the rest of the world and needs to find a way of expressing itself in the modern world.

I'd rather die fighting over great poets than over gods.

Friendships are the family we make - not the one we inherit. I've always been someone to whom friendship, elective affinities, is as important as family.

There's a lot of conflict and darkness inside everybody's family. We all pretend to outsiders that it's not so but behind locked doors there are usually high emotions running.

I had a very difficult relationship with my father, which ended up okay, but there were many difficult years.

When people do the cowardly thing, it's not about respect, it's about fear.

Rock and roll music - the music of freedom frightens people and unleashes all manner of conservative defense mechanisms.