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
freedoms gradually kinds
I've been gradually reclaiming all kinds of freedoms over these years..,
freedom struggle privilege
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.
freedom mind phrases
Both John F. Kennedy and Nelson Mandela use the same three-word phrase which in my mind says it all, which is, 'Freedom is Indivisible,' you can't slice it up, otherwise it ceases to be freedom. You can dislike Charlie Hedbo. ... But the fact that you dislike them has nothing to do with their right to speak.
religious freedom-of-speech constitution
It seems that the right of freedom of speech that was enshrined in numerous constitutions is now under attack by religious institutions.
people freedom-of-speech serious
You don't just - you often have to defend the freedoms of people you don't like, you know, whose work you don't like, because freedom of speech is not just for serious people. It's also for trashy people. So, and, unfortunately, this is at the trashy end of the scale.
freedom games balls
Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.
thinking people freedom-of-speech
But I - and I just think it's very - one of the problems of defending the extraordinary principle of freedom of speech is that you have to defend freedom of speech for people like that too.
hole shape stressed time
I used to say: ''there is a God-shaped hole in me.'' For a long time I stressed the absence, the hole. Now I find it is the shape which has become more important.
book books-and-reading both fall name stand
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.
across closed deeper easily events iraq lead lethal line moral muslims places roots separated stepped taken terrorism western worlds
From such defensive, separated worlds some youngsters have indefensibly stepped across a moral line and taken up their lethal rucksacks, ... The deeper alienations that lead to terrorism may have their roots in these young men's objections to events in Iraq or elsewhere, but the closed communities of some traditional Western Muslims are places in which young men's alienations can easily deepen.
atrocity subject
Many writers who have had to deal with the subject of atrocity can't face it head-on.
compassion suffering
Meanwhile, it seems, the world is suffering from compassion fatigue,
begin bit book happens publish strange understand
One of the strange things that happens when you publish a book is that you begin ... to see what resonances it has for the readers, ... Sometimes you begin to understand your book a bit more.
animal blows brutal create dances disguise drives finest furious fury giving heights human life lord mind ourselves pure pursue receiving spirit terrifying unafraid
Life is fury, he'd thought. Fury sexual, Oedipal, political, magical, brutal drives us to our finest heights and coarsest depths. Out of furia comes creation, inspiration, originality, passion, but also violence, pain, pure unafraid destruction, the giving and receiving of blows from which we never recover. The Furies pursue us; Shiva dances his furious dance to create and also to destroy. But never mind about gods! Sara ranting at him represented the human spirit in its purest, least socialized form. This is what we are, what we civilize ourselves to disguise the terrifying human animal in us, the exalted, transcendent, self-destructive, untramelled lord of creation.