Friendships are the family we make - not the one we inherit. I've always been someone to whom friendship, elective affinities, is as important as family.
— Salman Rushdie
Friendship
It matters, it always matters, to name rubbish as rubbish … to do otherwise is to legitimize it.
The responsibility for violence lies with those who perpetrate it.
I do not envy people who think they have a complete explanation of the world, for the simple reason that they are obviously wrong.
Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination of the heart.
— Salman Rushdie
Literature
The only people who see the whole picture are the ones who step outside the frame.
— Salman Rushdie
Creativity
What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.
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.
Children are the vessels into which adults pour their poison.