1,092 Quotes by Salman Rushdie

I don't like books that play to the gallery, but I've become more concerned with telling a story as clearly and engagingly as I can.

One of the strange things about violent and authoritarian regimes is they don't like the glare of negative publicity. If you can make them sufficiently uncomfortable, they frequently respond by doing what you need them to do in the spirit of setting people free or ceasing arrests.

When we stop believing in the gods we can start believing in their stories.

Sometimes when you finish a book, you don't know quite what you've got.

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.

A purpose of our lives is to broaden what we can understand and say and therefore be.

I don't think people cry reading 'Midnight's Children,' but a lot of people seem to cry watching the movie.

Without water we are nothing", the traveler thought. "Even an emperor, denied water, would swiftly turn to dust. Water is the real monarch and we are all its slaves.

The liveliness of literature lies in its exceptionality, in being the individual, idiosyncratic vision of one human being, in which, to our delight and great surprise, we may find our own vision reflected.