Quotes from Salman Rushdie

Two things form the bedrock of any open society - freedom of expression and rule of law. If you don't have those things, you don't have a free country.

Free societies...are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best evidence of freedom's existence.

It seems that the right of freedom of speech that was enshrined in numerous constitutions is now under attack by religious institutions.

But I - and I just think it's very - one of the problems of defending the extraordinary principle of freedom of speech is that you have to defend freedom of speech for people like that too.

Freedom to reject is the only freedom.

Stories in families are colossally important. Every family has stories: some funny, some proud, some embarrassing, some shameful. Knowing them is proof of belonging to the family.

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist

I get a lot of letters - a lot of letters saying, who knew that you were funny?