Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie
Sir Ahmad Salman Rushdie, FRSL, احمد سلمان رشدی; born 19 June 1947) is a British Indian novelist and essayist. His second novel, Midnight's Children, won the Booker Prize in 1981. Much of his fiction is set on the Indian subcontinent. He combines magical realism with historical fiction; his work is concerned with the many connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations...
NationalityIndian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth19 June 1947
CityMumbai, India
CountryIndia
How does newness come into the world? How is it born? Of what fusions, translations, conjoinings is it made? How does it survive, extreme and dangerous as it is? What compromises, what deals, what betrayals of its secret nature must it make to stave off the wrecking crew, the exterminating angel, the guillotine? Is birth always a fall? Do angels have wings? Can men fly?
There are two things in Indian history - one is the incredible optimism and potential of the place, and the other is the betrayal of that potential - for example, corruption. Those two strands intertwine through the whole of Indian history, and maybe not just Indian history.
Everest silences you...when you come down, nothing seems worth saying, nothing at all. You find the nothingness wrapping you up, like a sound. Non-being. You can't keep it up, of course. the world rushes in soon enough. What shuts you up is, I think, the sight you've had of perfection: why speak if you can't manage perfect thoughts, perfect sentences? It feels like a betrayal of what you've been through. But it fades; you accept that certain compromises, closures, are required if you're to continue.
Whenever I write something, I always want to make sure that what I write is defensible.
Writers shouldn't have lives that are interesting. It gets in the way of your work.
Susan Sontag was a great literary artist,"a fearless and original thinker, ever valiant for truth, and an indefatigable ally in many struggles.
In the experience of art, time seems not to exist.
When people do the cowardly thing, it's not about respect, it's about fear.
Memory is a way of telling you what's important to you.
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.
Always do something impossible right at the beginning of the show?. Swallow a sword, tie yourself in a knot, defy gravity. Do what the audience knows it could never do no matter how hard it tries. After that you'll have them eating out of your hand.
There'll be one track that I like and a lot of it that is just wallpaper and sounds the same.
It was because it was easier to blame me, ... You know, 'Why is he rocking the boat?' In those days there was a lot of that stuff. He was asking for it. He did it on purpose. He was begging for it. It was just conventional blaming-the-victim stuff. I don't like the term 'victim' when applied to myself. Certainly I felt the guilt burden had shifted from the people doing the violence to the person on the receiving end of the violence.
I've been gradually reclaiming all kinds of freedoms over these years..,