100 Salman Rushdie Quotes From The Magic Realism Writer

Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie, better known to the world as Salman Rushdie, was born on 19 June 1947.

Rushdie is a British Indian novelist and essayist who has written many notable books. Most notable of his works are 'Midnight's Children' and 'The Satanic Verses', both of which are quite controversial.

Born and raised in Bombay, India, Rushdie studied in a private school in Bombay before attending a boarding school, The Rugby School, in Warwickshire, England. He later went on to study history when he attended King's College at the University of Cambridge. He is ranked thirteenth on The Times' list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.

Other known novels written by Salman Rushdie are 'Grimus', 'Shame', 'Fury', 'Shalimar The Clown', 'The Moor's Last Sigh', 'The Ground Beneath Her Feet', 'The Enchantress Of Florence', 'Two Years Eight Months And Twenty-Eight Nights', 'The Golden House', and 'Quichotte'. There also exist some great children's books written by the author Salman Rushdie named 'Haroun And The Sea Of Stories', and 'Luke And The Fire Of Life'.

Salman Rushdie quotes can discuss both Indian and British societies together, as both societies have impacted how the author has written each novel in the past. That being said, most of his work has always captured history and tales from the Indian subcontinent.

Below, we have collected the best Salman Rushdie quotes. If you like these Salman Rushdie quotes, you can also read these Tolkein quotes and 'Throne Of Glass' quotes for more great quotes from fiction, novels, and authors.

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This section contains all the famous quotes by Salman Rushdie. Which of these Salman Rushdie quotes is your favorite?

1. "A sigh isn't just a sigh. We inhale the world and breathe out meaning. While we can."

- Salman Rushdie.

2. "Anyone who reads my work will see that there are often difficult relationships between fathers and sons."

- Salman Rushdie.

3. "Reality is a question of perspective."

- Salman Rushdie.

4. "Not all possibilities are open to us."

- Salman Rushdie, 'The Satanic Verses'.

5. "Children are the vessels into which adults pour their poison."

- Salman Rushdie.

6. "Aim for the stars."

- Salman Rushdie.

7. "Now I know what a ghost is. Unfinished business, that's what."

- Salman Rushdie.

8. "I hate admitting that my enemies have a point."

- Salman Rushdie, 'The Satanic Verses'.

9. "Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts."

- Salman Rushdie.

10. "Realism can break a writer's heart."

- Salman Rushdie.

11. "One of the extraordinary things about human events is that the unthinkable becomes thinkable."

- Salman Rushdie.

12. "Doubt, it seems to me, is the central condition of a human being in the twentieth century."

- Salman Rushdie.

13. "I don't dictate to anyone what to believe and what not to. And I don't want that to be dictated to me either."

- Salman Rushdie.

14. "How do you defeat terrorism? Don’t be terrorized."

- Salman Rushdie.

15. "You can take the boy out of Bombay; you can't take Bombay out of the boy, you know."

- Salman Rushdie.

16. "To read a 600-page novel and then say that it has deeply offended you: well, you have done a lot of work to be offended."

- Salman Rushdie.

17. "Reality is a question of perspective."

- Salman Rushdie.

18. "Once you put a thought into the world, it can be disagreed with, but it can't be unthought."

- Salman Rushdie.

19. "The glamour of being forbidden must not be underestimated."

- Salman Rushdie.

You can read love quotes from Salman Rushdie in this section.

20. "Home is the place where you feel happy."

- Salman Rushdie.

21. "You can’t judge an internal injury by the size of the hole."

- Salman Rushdie.

22. "Perhaps the story you finish is never the one you begin."

- Salman Rushdie.

23. "Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another's, were no longer our own, individual, discrete."

- Salman Rushdie.

24. "A photograph is a moral decision taken in one-eighth of a second."

- Salman Rushdie.

25. "What can’t be cured must be endured."

- Salman Rushdie.

26. "We were language's magpies by nature, stealing whatever sounded bright and shiny."

- Salman Rushdie.

27. "Memory is a way of telling you what's important to you."

- Salman Rushdie.

28. "Ignorantly is how we all fall in love; for it is a kind of fall."

- Salman Rushdie.

29. "Meanwhile, it seems, the world is suffering from compassion fatigue."

- Salman Rushdie.

30. "I want more than what I want."

- Salman Rushdie, 'The Ground Beneath Her Feet'.

31. "Whenever someone who knows you disappears, you lose one version of yourself."

- Salman Rushdie.

32. "To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world.

- Salman Rushdie, 'Midnight's Children'.

33. "Always go for the broken and try hard."

- Salman Rushdie.

34. "In the cookie of life, friends are the chocolate chips."

- Salman Rushdie.

35. "Both are responsible. But I know when I write a book it's my name on the book, so I stand or fall by what I sign. And so must she."

- Salman Rushdie.

In this category, you can read British Indian novelist and essayist Salman Rushdie quotes about life and realism. Which of these Salman Rushdie quotes is your favorite? Can you find Salman Rushdie quotes from your favorite novel here?

36. "For every snake, there is a ladder; for every ladder, a snake."

- Salman Rushdie.

37. "With death comes honesty."

- Salman Rushdie, 'The Satanic Verses'.

38. "Nothing really improves us."

- Salman Rushdie, 'Salon Interview'.

39. "Our lives teach us who we are."

- Salman Rushdie.

40. "Masks beneath masks until suddenly the bare bloodless skull."

- Salman Rushdie.

41. "Free speech is life itself."

- Salman Rushdie.

42. "The only people who see the whole picture are the ones who step out of the frame."

- Salman Rushdie.

43. "What’s real and what’s true aren’t necessarily the same."

- Salman Rushdie.

44. "Few topographical boundaries can rival the frontiers of the mind."

- Salman Rushdie.

45. "We all owe death a life."

- Salman Rushdie.

46. "Whatever improves one person will disimprove another."

- Salman Rushdie.

47. "The world, somebody wrote, is the place we prove real by dying in it."

- Salman Rushdie.

48. "Life is elsewhere. Cross frontiers. Fly away."

- Salman Rushdie, 'The Ground Beneath Her Feet'.

49. "If you’re offended, it’s your problem."

- Salman Rushdie.

50. "The lessons one learns at school are not always the ones the school thinks it’s teaching."

- Salman Rushdie.

51. "I learned: the first lesson of my life: nobody can face the world with his eyes open all the time."

- Salman Rushdie, 'Midnight's Children'.

52. "The world is finite; our hopes spill over its rim."

- Salman Rushdie, 'The Satanic Verses'.

53. "Even when things are at their worst, there's a little voice in your head saying, 'Good story!'"

- Salman Rushdie.

54. "If my child had prejudice in his head, I'd be ashamed. I would see it as my failure as a parent."

- Salman Rushdie.

Here you can read the best Salman Rushdie quotes on how to shape the world and how freedom exists.

55. "There is no such thing as perfect security, only varying levels of insecurity."

- Salman Rushdie.

56. "One of the problems with defending free speech is you often have to defend people that you find to be outrageous and unpleasant and disgusting."

- Salman Rushdie.

57. "Broad-mindedness is related to tolerance."

- Salman Rushdie.

58. "Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself."

- Salman Rushdie.

59. "What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist."

- Salman Rushdie.

60. "Freedom to reject is the only freedom."

- Salman Rushdie, 'The Ground Beneath Her Feet'.

61. "You can't have modern states based on ideas which have been out of date for a thousand years."

- Salman Rushdie.

62. "When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy."

- Salman Rushdie.

63. "Vertigo is the conflict between the fear of falling and the desire to fall."

- Salman Rushdie.

64. "When you throw everything up in the air anything becomes possible."

- Salman Rushdie.

65. "Be strong-minded and argue with the world."

- Salman Rushdie.

66. "England in a way is lucky. It's an island, so the frontiers are given by the sea."

- Salman Rushdie.

67. "Open-mindedness is the sibling of peace."

- Salman Rushdie.

68. "A mature society understands that at the heart of democracy is argument."

- Salman Rushdie.

69 .‎"No people whose word for 'yesterday' is the same as their word for 'tomorrow' can be said to have a firm grip on the time."

- Salman Rushdie, 'Midnight's Children'.

70. "If somebody's trying to shut you up, sing louder, and if possible, better."

- Salman Rushdie.

71. "Two things form the bedrock of any open society - freedom of expression and rule of law. If you don't have those things, you don't have a free country."

- Salman Rushdie.

72. "Liberate yourself, because no one else is going to liberate you."

- Salman Rushdie.

Read great British Indian novelist and essayist Salman Rushdie quotes on religion.

73. "Fundamentalism isn’t about religion, it’s about power."

- Salman Rushdie.

74. "Faith without doubt is addiction."

- Salman Rushdie.

75. "I've been worrying about God a little bit lately... It seems like he's been in a bad mood."

- Salman Rushdie.

76. "From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable."

- Salman Rushdie

77. "What kind of Christmas present would Jesus ask Santa for?"

- Salman Rushdie, 'Fury'.

78. "I do not need the idea of God to explain the world I live in."

- Salman Rushdie.

79. "Religion is responsible for a lot of the problems in the history of the world and it's not something that I practice or recommend, but to each his own."

- Salman Rushdie.

80. "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, 'The Satanic Verses.'

81. "'Respect for religion' has become a code phrase meaning 'fear of religion.'"

- Salman Rushdie.

For the final installment of Salman Rushdie quotes, we have collected great Salman Rushdie quotes about the world of fiction, the novel, and the magic that every word weaves.

82. "My horizons have shrunk and I have only endings to write."

- Salman Rushdie.

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

- Salman Rushdie.

84. "When I was growing up, everyone around me was fond of fooling around with words."

- Salman Rushdie, 'Salon Interview'.

85. "When you write, you write out of your best self. Everything else drops away."

- Salman Rushdie.

86. "Literature is the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear voices talking about everything in every possible way."

- Salman Rushdie.

87. "We are the storytelling animal."

- Salman Rushdie.

88. "It is very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it."

- Salman Rushdie.

89. "No story comes from nowhere; new stories are born from old."

- Salman Rushdie, 'Haroun And The Sea Of Stories'.

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

- Salman Rushdie.

91. "An attack upon our ability to tell stories is not just censorship - it is a crime against our nature as human beings."

- Salman Rushdie.

92. "American literature has always been immigrant."

- Salman Rushdie.

93. "What one writer can make in the solitude of one room is something no power can easily destroy."

- Salman Rushdie.

94. "... writers, Mahound. We are the people you can't forgive."

- Salman Rushdie, 'Midnight's Children.'

95. "I make no complaint. I am a writer."

- Salman Rushdie.

96. "When a reader falls in love with a book, he absorbs the essence of the book."

- Salman Rushdie.

97. "The novel does not seek to establish a privileged language but it insists upon the freedom to portray and analyze the struggle between the different contestants for such privileges."

- Salman Rushdie.

98. "He knew what he knew: that the real world was full of magic, so magical worlds could easily be real."

- Salman Rushdie, 'Haroun and the Sea of Stories.'

99. "A book is not completed till it's read."

- Salman Rushdie.

100. "I do not accept my condition; I will strive to change it; but I inhabit it, I am trying to learn from it."

- Salman Rushdie.

Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for 100 Salman Rushdie quotes from the magic realism writer,  then why not take a look at these Ursula K Le Guin quotes or these [magical quotes] for more great quotes that will shape how you think?

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