Satanic Verses Quotes

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  Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.

  Salman Rushdie

  Courage, Communication, Novelists

  Salman Rushdie (1989). “The Satanic Verses”, New York, N.Y. : Viking

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• A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.

  Salman Rushdie

  Courage, Sleep, Names

  The Satanic Verses pt. 2 (1988)

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• Well, we're still in the middle of it. And it doesn't show any sign of going away. And these attacks that were - that seemed so odd at the time, with "Satanic Verses," because we didn't have any context for this. You know, where did that come from? It seemed to come out of nowhere.

  Salman Rushdie

  Going Away, Satanic, Odd

  "In 'Joseph Anton,' Salman Rushdie Writes Novelistically About His Own Life". "PBS NewsHour" with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. October 7, 2012.

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• I opposed the Fatwa against Salman Rushdie. I read the book and took a critical distance. I did not think The Satanic Verses is a blasphemous book. I did not consider the book as being a great read, but as an intellectual I read, I assess, and I respond. I make a difference between true freedom of expression to which we owe a response and provocation, which we ignore.

  Tariq Ramadan

  Distance, Book, Thinking

  "'You want my reaction? You get my silence.'". Interview with Lars Mensel, Clemens Lukitsch, www.theeuropean-magazine.com. November 19, 2012.

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• To be born again,' sang Gibreal Farishta tumbling from the heaveans, 'first you have to die. Ho ji! Ho ji! To land upon the bosomy earth, first one needs to fly Tat-taa! Takatun! How to ever smile again, if first you won't cry? How to win the darling's love mister, without a sigh?

  Salman Rushdie

  Winning, Land, Needs

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• Names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like so many of the earth's marvels, beneath the dust of habit.

  Salman Rushdie

  Dust, Names, Sound

  Salman Rushdie (1989). “The Satanic Verses”, New York, N.Y. : Viking

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• I had a fall out with Satan. Repeating satanic verses.

  Layzie Bone

  Fall, Satanic, Verses

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• Satanic Verses is a despicable book that could not have been written by a person who wished to behave decently and responsibly.

  Orson Scott Card

  Book, Satanic, Behave

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• When I was writing The Satanic Verses, if you had asked me about the phenomenon that we all now know as radical Islam, I wouldn't have had much to say. As recently as the mid-1980s, it didn't seem to be a big deal.

  Salman Rushdie

  Writing, Islam, Satanic

  "A translated man". Interview with James Campbell, www.theguardian.com. September 29, 2006.

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• I've read The Satanic Verses and I thought it a nasty, sneering, free-thinking book... I can understand why the book is offensive and it didn't seem to me to be anything but offensive when I read it.

  Maurice Cowling

  Book, Thinking, Satanic

  "Singular Encounters" by Naim Attallah, Quartet Books, (p. 142), 1990.

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• So when I studied history at Cambridge, I did a special subject in that, exactly that. And then actually that - while I was studying it was where I came across the so-called incident of the satanic verses.

  Salman Rushdie

  Special, Satanic, Study

  "In 'Joseph Anton,' Salman Rushdie Writes Novelistically About His Own Life". "PBS NewsHour" with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. October 07, 2012.

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• 'The Satanic Verses' was denied the ordinary life of a novel. It became something smaller and uglier: an insult.

  Salman Rushdie

  Ordinary, Satanic, Insult

  Salman Rushdie (2012). “Joseph Anton”, p.115, Random House

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• In writing 'The Satanic Verses,' I think I was writing for the first time from the whole of myself. The English part, the Indian part. The part of me that loves London, and the part that longs for Bombay. And at my typewriter, alone, I could indulge this.

  Salman Rushdie

  Writing, Thinking, Typewriters

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• Prophet Mohammed would have no objection to The Satanic Verses.

  Salman Rushdie

  Motivational, Satanic, Prophet

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