Nobody ever wanted to go to war, but if a war came your way, it might as well be the right war, about the most important things in the world, and you might as well, if you were going to fight it, be called "Rushdie," and stand where your father had placed you, in the tradition of the grand Aristotelian, Averroës, Abul Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Rushd.

She allowed history to leave her without trying to hold it back, the way children allow a grand parade to pass, holding it in their memory, making it an unforgettable thing, making it their own

A man who catches History's eye is thereafter bound to a mistress from whom he will never escape.

We walk unknowing amid the shadows of our past and, forgetting our history, are ignorant of ourselves.

But the truth was that she still felt the past moving like a thrombosis in the blood. It might reach her heart and kill her one of these days.

The system is corrupt," a young man on a bicycle shouted, "and if it cannot be changed it must be destroyed. The mastodon revolution is here and you must all choose which side of history you want to be on.

In this world without quiet corners, there can be no easy escapes from history, from hullabaloo, from terrible, unquiet fuss.

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.