Opinions: Salman Rushdie

What Salman Rushdie says about…

…writing

• The writers are used to sit in the room, stare at the window wondering what the hell to do.
• The Writers are those who speak truth to power.

…”Satanic Verses”

• It’s about a person NOT called Mohammed, that lives in the place NOT called Mecca and who creates a new religion NOT called Islam. It’s a dream in the mind of a person who goes insane – that’s what we call in the trade ‘fiction’.
• The book was not the problem, the attitude to the book was the problem.

…Iran

The problem of Iran is that even liberals are assholes.

…tastes

Not everyone thinks the same, that’s why when you go to the store you see a lot of different books written by different people. They are not all by me, unfortunately.

…Democracy

The nature of democracy is disagreement.

… The Fatwa and “Joseph Anton”

I am happy that I could finally get a great book out of it.

If someone asks me about the fatwa I will just throw this book at them.

The source: Salman Rushdie’s talk with Robert Siegel host of NPR’s All Things Considered at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium, DC – 8 Oct. 2012 Some quotes can be somewhat imprecise.