A race that rejected the idea of personal sacrifice would surely be erased from time's records before long.

— Salman Rushdie

A relationship with an imaginary woman is preferable to a relationship with a real one.

— Salman Rushdie

As a writer, one of the things we all learned from the movies was a kind of compression that didn't exist before people were used to watching films. For instance, if you wanted to write a flashback in a novel, you once had to really contextualize it a lot, to set it up. Now, readers know exactly what you're doing. Close-ups, too.

— Salman Rushdie

As though she had entered a fable, as though she were no more than words crawling along a dry page, or as though she were becoming that page itself, that surface on which her story would be written and across which there blew a hot and merciless wind, turning her body to papyrus, her skin to parchment, her soul to paper.

— Salman Rushdie

At sixteen, you still think you can escape from your father. You aren't listening to his voice speaking through your mouth, you don't see how your gestures already mirror his; you don't see him in the way you hold your body, in the way you sign your name. You don't hear his whisper in your blood.

— Salman Rushdie

...because it is the privilege and the curse of midnight's children to be both masters and victims of their times, to forsake privacy and be sucked into the annihilating whirlpool of the multitudes, and to be unable to live or die in peace.

— Salman Rushdie

Broad-mindedness is related to tolerance open-mindedness is the sibling of peace.

— Salman Rushdie

But great tragedy is universal

— Salman Rushdie

But then the subject turned to the spiritual life and Meg talked about her many visits to ashrams in India and her admiration for Swami Muktananda and Grumpy. That got in the way, especially because he told her of his skepticism regarding the guru industry, and suggested she might profitably read Rita Meta’s book Karma Cola. “Why are you so cynical?” she asked him, as if she genuinely wanted to know the answer, and he said that if you grew up in India it was easy to conclude that these people were fakes. “Yes, of course there are lots of charlatans,” she said, reasonably, “but can’t you discriminate?” He shook his head sadly. “No,” he said. “No, I can’t.” That was the end of their chat.

— Salman Rushdie

Chatham-Shud,' he said slowly, 'is the Arch-Enemy of all Stories, even of language itself. He is the Prince of Silence and the Foe of Speech. And because everything ends, because dreams end, stories end, life ends, at the finish of everything we use his name. "It's finished," we tell one another, "it's over. Chatham-Shud: The End.

— Salman Rushdie