The miniatures of the Mughal period are really the pinnacle of Indian artistic achievement. And not a single one of those paintings is done by an individual artist. – Salman Rushdie
If Turkey wants to join Europe, it will have to become a European country, and that might take a long time. – Salman Rushdie
Mo Yan is the Chinese equivalent of the Soviet Russian apparatchik writer Mikhail Sholokhov: a patsy of the regime. – Salman Rushdie
Human beings, you see, do absolutely two primary things. We see like and unlike. Like becomes, in literature, simile and metaphor. Unlike becomes uniqueness and difference, from which I believe, the novel is born. – Salman Rushdie
I think that England made a very big, historical mistake to allow itself to become the kind of terrorist capital of the world. – Salman Rushdie
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. – Salman Rushdie
Dissensions between Muslim nations run at least as deep, if not deeper, than those nations’ resentment of the West. – Salman Rushdie
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. – Salman Rushdie
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. – Salman Rushdie
The Muslim population in India is, largely speaking, not radicalised. From the beginning, they were always very secular-minded. – Salman Rushdie
If my child had prejudice in his head, I’d be ashamed. I would see it as my failure as a parent. – Salman Rushdie
Self-censorship is a lie to yourself; if you are going to be trying to seriously create art, to create literary art, and you decide to hold back, to censor yourself, then you are a fool to yourself and it would be better that you kept your mouth shut and did not speak. – Salman Rushdie
Writers have been in terrible situations and have yet managed to produce extraordinary work. – Salman Rushdie
The response of anybody interested in liberty is that we all have a say and the ability to have an argument is exactly what liberty is, even though it may never be resolved. In any authoritarian society the possessor of power dictates, and if you try and step outside he will come after you. – Salman Rushdie
Perhaps because my relationship with my father went through such a long, bumpy time, it’s been very important for me to work to try to keep lines of communication open between my sons and myself to try to avoid my father’s mistakes. At least if you’re making mistakes, make different mistakes. – Salman Rushdie
Writers have an opinion about the world and offer arguments about the world. They should offer contemplation. – Salman Rushdie
The gamble of literature is that I make the best work I can; the most truthful, the most representative of how I see things. I try and do that, and then I put it out there and say to you, ‘What do you think?’ I hope that you think well of it, obviously. – Salman Rushdie
The West should be tougher on Pakistan. It is trying to play both ends against the middle – to look like the friend of the revolutionaries on the one hand and a friend of the West in the fight against terrorism. It can’t be both things. – Salman Rushdie
One of the things I’ve thought about ‘Midnight’s Children’ is that it is a novel which puts a Muslim family at the centre of the Indian experience. – Salman Rushdie
Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one. – Salman Rushdie
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. – Salman Rushdie
The First Amendment defends all forms of speech including hate speech, which is why groups like Ku Klux Klan are allowed to utter their poisonous remarks. – Salman Rushdie
