Rushdie Quotes

• So India’s problem turns out to be the world’s problem. What happened in India has happened in God’s name. The problem’s name is God.

  Salman Rushdie

  Names, India, World

  "Religion, as ever, is the poison in India's blood" by Salman Rushdie, www.theguardian.com. March 8, 2002.

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• Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.

  Salman Rushdie

  Book, Writing, Creation

  Salman Rushdie (1990). “In good faith”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• Rather than go to a demonstration to burn an effigy of the author Salman Rushdie, I would have hoped that it'd be the real thing.

  Cat Stevens

  Real, Demonstration, Having Hope

  "Cat Stevens Gives Support To Call for Death of Rushdie" by Craig R. Whitney, p. C18, archive.nytimes.com. May 23, 1989.

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• I am called an Islamic fundamentalist by Rushdie. My critics in Pakistan say I am a Zionist agent. I must be doing something right.

  Imran Khan

  Islamic, Pakistan, Agents

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• It's rare that you get to read, let alone teach, an arbitrary canon of your choosing in a tight time setting, and I tore through a fairly wide range of Indian writers, some contemporary - like Arundhati Roy and Salman Rushdie - and others older, like R.K. Narayan. And I think what happened at that stage was that I was forced to take a position in my own writing style that was more fixed, as opposed to reading a book at a time and defining myself in opposition to or in awe of it.

  Karan Mahajan

  Book, Reading, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

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• The one fatwa that everyone here is probably familiar with is the Salman Rushdie fatwa, but a fatwa doesn't have to be a violent thing at all. A fatwa is simply a ruling on Islamic law; there can be fatwas on clothing.

  Sadakat Kadri

  Islamic, Violent, Familiar

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I do not read the works of Salman Rushdie, I write them. By the time I have finished writing them all I can think of is never reading them again. It's so deep, your involvement with a book, that once it's finished, then you are really done with it.

  Salman Rushdie

  Book, Reading, Writing

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

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• It was a very funny conference. I knew [Christopher Hitchens] before that. He had always been a good angel to me. He once stole a phrase from me that came out of his mouth on television. I saw his eyes move sideways. I thought, It's alright, you can have it! The conference was light on women. Salman Rushdie showed up, they were doing their own thing. I didn't feel neglected!

  Hilary Mantel

  Moving, Eye, Angel

  Source: newrepublic.com

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• I also know Patrick White in Australia, both personally and as a writer, and Salman Rushdie in India.

  William Golding

  White, Australia, India

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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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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• I have much more power and protection than Salman Rushdie, because I'm an American citizen, but yes, I live in terrible fear for my life and for the lives of my children. My whole family has been threatened, my adoptive parents had to sell their house and move out of Washington, D.C. because of death threats caused by my work and activism.

  Kola Boof

  Children, Moving, Parent

  "Kola Boof: Words with the Author of the Best Black Book of 2006". Interview with Kam Williams, aalbc.com.

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• It [defending Salmon Rushdie] was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual and the defense of free expression.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Bullying, Hate, Expression

  "Rushdie and After" by David Remnick, www.newyorker.com. September 16, 2012.

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• My father decided that he was such a admirer of Ibn Rushd's philosophy, thinking that he changed the family name to Rushdie. I realized why my father was so interested in him, because he was really an incredibly modernizing voice inside our Islamic culture.

  Salman Rushdie

  Father, Philosophy, Islamic

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• In Islam there is a line between let's say freedom and the line which is then transgressed into immorality and irresponsibility and I think as far as this writer is concerned, unfortunately, he has been irresponsible with his freedom of speech. Salman Rushdie or indeed any writer who abuses the prophet, or indeed any prophet, under Islamic law, the sentence for that is actually death. It's got to be seen as a deterrent, so that other people should not commit the same mistake again.

  Cat Stevens

  Mistake, Islamic, Thinking

  "Yussuf Islam, Formerly Cat Stevens, Expresses Support For Rushdie Death Sentence". The Christian Science Monitor, 1989.

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• One of the reasons my name is Rushdie is that my father was an admirer of Ibn Rush'd, the 12th century Arab philosopher known as Averroes in the West. In his time, he was making the non-literalist case for interpreting the Koran.

  Salman Rushdie

  Father, Names, West

  "Salman Rushdie: Inside the Mind of Jihadists". Interview with Nathan Gardels, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 25, 2011.

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• When I was starting out, science fiction was a little genre over there, which only a few people read. But now -- where are you going to put, for example, Salman Rushdie? Or any of the South American writers? Most people get by calling them magical realists.

  Doris Lessing

  People, Example, Fiction

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• Many Scandinavian writers who had made their name in literary fiction felt they wanted to have a go at the crime novel to show they could compete with the best. If Salman Rushdie had been Norwegian, he would definitely have written at least one thriller.

  Jo Nesbo

  Crime Novels, Names, Fiction

  "Jo Nesbø: 'If Salman Rushdie had been Norwegian, he'd have written a thriller'". Interview with John Crace, www.theguardian.com. October 28, 2012.

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• I have for a long time loved fabulist, imaginative fiction, such as the writing of Italo Calvino, Jose Saramago, Michael Bulgakov, and Salman Rushdie. I also like the magic realist writers, such as Borges and Marquez, and feel that interesting truths can be learned about our world by exploring highly distorted worlds.

  Alan Lightman

  Writing, Our World, Long

  ""Mr g," by Alan Lightman". Interview with Jeff Glor, www.cbsnews.com. January 24, 2012.

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• Rushdie is a hostage.

  Don DeLillo

  Hostage

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• She's no flibberti-gibberti mamzell, but a whir-stir-get-lost-sir bundla dynamite!

  Salman Rushdie

  Lost, Dynamite

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

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• Salman Rushdie, indeed any writer who abuses the prophet or indeed any prophet under Islamic law, the sentence for that is actually death.

  Cat Stevens

  Islamic, Law, Abuse

  "Yussuf Islam, Formerly Cat Stevens, Expresses Support For Rushdie Death Sentence". The Christian Science Monitor, 1989.

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