Salman Rushdie
Indian-born British novelist and essayist
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Beyond any shadow of a doubt, the ugliest phrase to enter the English language last year was "extraordinary rendition". To those of us who love words, this phrase's brutalisation of meaning is an infallible signal of its intent to deceive....
Language, too, has laws, and those laws tell us this new American usage is improper — a crime against the word. Every so often the habitual newspeak of politics throws up a term whose calculated blandness makes us shiver with fear — yes, and loathing.
—Salman Rushdie, Indian-born British novelist and essayist, The Sydney Morning Herald, January 10, 2006
Posted on February 9, 2006 at 5:31 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
The language America uses to describe itself ... is, oddly, at once inward-looking and imperialist. It is possible for American pundits to praise the US for taking action especially when Europe opposes it. It is at the same time very difficult even for American liberals to oppose the Reaganites' guardians-of-the-world rhetoric. It is, after all, a rhetoric developed by US liberals themselves, notably in the Kennedy era. The key to this national language is an absolute belief in the goodness of America. From this, madness springs, because now words — freedom, justice, democracy, terror — can take on whatever meanings are required to support the belief.
—Salman Rushdie, Indian-born British novelist and essayist, The Guardian, May 26, 1986
Posted on November 12, 2003 at 6:04 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
It's very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it. To say that the book which you have not opened, which you have not read, which you do not possess, offends you seems to me to be not just a peculiar position but a reprehensible position.
—Salman Rushdie, Indian-born British novelist and essayist, The Sunday Times of London, October 2, 1994
Posted on October 8, 1999 at 6:35 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.
—Salman Rushdie, Indian-born British novelist and essayist, Interview in The Guardian, November 8, 1990
Posted on July 15, 2002 at 11:16 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
I don't think it is always necessary to take up the anti-colonial—or is it post-colonial?—cudgels against English. What seems to me to be happening is that those people who were once colonized by the language are now rapidly remaking it, domesticating it, becoming more and more relaxed about the way they use it—assisted by the English language's enormous flexibility and size, they are carving out large territories for themselves within its frontiers.
—Salman Rushdie, Indian-born British novelist and essayist, Imaginary Homelands
Posted on July 23, 2003 at 9:43 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.
—Salman Rushdie, Indian-born British novelist and essayist, Quoted in "Independent"
Posted on March 5, 2003 at 8:31 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.
—Salman Rushdie, Indian-born British novelist and essayist
Posted on March 27, 2002 at 11:45 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
If you want to tell the untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got to find a language. Which goes for film as well as prose, for documentary as well as autobiography. Use the wrong language, and you're dumb and blind.
—Salman Rushdie, Indian-born British novelist and essayist, Songs Don't Know the Score
Posted on August 1, 2001 at 12:44 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
The novel does not seek to establish a privileged language but it insists upon the freedom to portray and analyse the struggle between the different contestants for such privileges.
—Salman Rushdie, Indian-born British novelist and essayist, Is Nothing Sacred?
Posted on March 2, 2001 at 7:49 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Your blasphemy, Salman, can't be forgiven. . . . To set your words against the Words of God.
—Salman Rushdie, Indian-born British novelist and essayist, The Satanic Verses
Posted on November 17, 2001 at 10:47 AM
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