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But There's One Thing We Must All Be Clear About: Terrorism Is Not The Pursuit Of Legitimate Goals By Some Sort Of Illegitimate Means. Whatever The Murderers May Be Trying To Achieve, Creating A Better World Certainly Isn't One Of Their Goals. Instead They Are Out To Murder Innocent People.

-Salman Rushdie

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But There's One Thing

Salman Rushdie

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But There's One Thing We Must All Be Clear About: Terrorism Is Not The Pursuit Of Legitimate Goals By Some Sort Of Illegitimate Means. Whatever The Murderers May Be Trying To Achieve, Creating A Better World Certainly Isn't One Of Their Goals. Instead They Are Out To Murder Innocent People.

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But There's One Thing We Must All Be Clear About: Terrorism Is Not The Pursuit Of Legitimate Goals By Some Sort Of Illegitimate Means. Whatever The Murderers May Be Trying To Achieve, Creating A Better World Certainly Isn't One Of Their Goals. Instead They Are Out To Murder Innocent People.

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India And Pakistan

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A Figure Of Speech Is A Shifty Thing; It Can Be Twisted Or It Can Be Straight.

When I'm Writing A Book, Sentence By Sentence, I'm Not Thinking Theoretically. I'm Just Trying To Work Out The Story From Inside The Characters I've Got.

I Seem To Have Fallen For Women With Missing Parents. Goodness Knows What It Signifies.

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If You Look At Indian Movies, Every Time They Wanted An Exotic Locale, They Would Have A Dance Number In Kashmir. Kashmir Was India's Fairyland. Indians Went There Because In A Hot Country You Go To A Cold Place. People Would Be Entranced By The Sight Of Snow.

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Not All Possibilities Are Open To Us. The World Is Finite; Our Hopes Spill Over Its Rim.

Religion, A Mediaeval Form Of Unreason, When Combined With Modern Weaponry Becomes A Real Threat To Our Freedoms.

The Problem Of Telling Contemporary History Is That Your Message Gets Outdated.

The World Is Full Of Things That Upset People. But Most Of Us Deal With It And Move On And Don't Try And Burn The Planet Down.

There Is No Magic On Earth Strong Enough To Wipe Out The Legacies Of One's Parents.

A People That Has Remained Convinced Of Its Greatness And Invulnerability, That Has Chosen To Believe Such A Myth In The Face Of All The Evidence, Is A People In The Grip Of A Kind Of Sleep, Or Madness.

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World Religions

Rock And Roll Music - The Music Of Freedom Frightens People And Unleashes All Manner Of Conservative Defense Mechanisms.

The Thing I Really Like About Twitter Is The Speed With Which Information Reaches Me. You Find Out Things From Twitter Long Before They're On The News. That I Think Is Valuable. In Terms Of Actually Tweeting Myself, I Have Just Lost Enthusiasm For It. Maybe I'll Do Some Of It This Week To Tell People About The Pen Festival And Encourage Them To Show Up.

In Television, The 60-minute Series, 'the Wire' And 'mad Men' And So On, The Writer Is The Primary Creative Artist.

I Don't Think I've Ever Quite Grown Out Of It, Actually. There Was A Point Where I Could Recite Some Of Those Elvish Verses - Which I've Mercifully Forgotten. But I Can Still, If Really Pushed, Recite The Text Of The Inside Of The Ruling Ring In The Language Of Mordor.

When I Was Writing The Satanic Verses, If You Had Asked Me About The Phenomenon That We All Now Know As Radical Islam, I Wouldn't Have Had Much To Say. As Recently As The Mid-1980s, It Didn't Seem To Be A Big Deal.

People Must Be Protected From Prejudice Against Their Person. But People Cannot Be Protected From Prejudice Against Their Ideas - Because Otherwise We're All Done.

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We Crave Permission Openly To Become Our Secret Selves.

The First Amendment Defends All Forms Of Speech Including Hate Speech, Which Is Why Groups Like Ku Klux Klan Are Allowed To Utter Their Poisonous Remarks.

But Love Is What We Want, Not Freedom. Who Then Is The Unluckier Man? The Beloved, Who Is Given His Heart's Desire And Must For Ever After Fear Its Loss, Or The Free Man, With His Unlooked-for Liberty, Naked And Alone Between The Captive Armies Of The Earth?

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The West Was Involved In Toppling The Mossadegh Government. That Ultimately Led To The Iranian Revolution.

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Airport Security Exists To Guard Us Against Terrorist Attacks.

Airport Security

Unless, Of Course, There's No Such Thing As Chance;...in Which Case, We Should Either-optimistically-get Up And Cheer, Because If Everything Is Planned In Advance, Then We All Have A Meaning And Are Spared The Terror Of Knowing Ourselves To Be Random, Without A Why; Or Else, Of Course, We Might-as Pessimists-give Up Right Here And Now, Understanding The Futility Of Thought Decision Action, Since Nothing We Think Makes Any Difference Anyway, Things Will Be As They Will. Where, Then, Is Optimism? In Fate Or In Chaos?

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Pakistan Is Alarmed By The Rising Indian Influence In Afghanistan, And Fears That An Afghanistan Cleansed Of The Taliban Would Be An Indian Client State, Thus Sandwiching Pakistan Between Two Hostile Countries. The Paranoia Of Pakistan About India's Supposed Dark Machinations Should Never Be Underestimated.

I Discovered That If You Find The Language To Talk To Younger Readers, Children Can Accept Anything.

We Have Come To Think Of Taking Offence As A Fundamental Right. We Value Very Little More Highly Than Our Rage, Which Gives Us, In Our Opinion, The Moral High Ground. From There We Can Shoot Down At Our Enemies And Inflict Heavy Fatalities.

Moral High Ground

Travel Was Pointless. It Removed You From The Place In Which You Had A Meaning, And To Which You Gave Meaning In Return By Dedicating Your Life To It, And It Spirited You Away Into Fairylands Where You Were, And Looked, Frankly Absurd.

I've Met The Dalai Lama Briefly, But I Would Probably Say My Grandfather Was The Wisest Person I Ever Met. He Was My Mother's Father, An Indian, A Family Doctor, And Very Unlike Me In That He Was Deeply Religious.

Fundamentalists Believe That We Don't Believe In Anything. In Their View Of The World, They Are In Possession Of Absolute Certainties, While We Are Descending Into Decadence. We Will Be Able To Triumph Over Terrorism Not By Waging War On It, But Through A Conscious, Fearless Way Of Life.

I Get A Lot Of Letters - A Lot Of Letters Saying, Who Knew That You Were Funny?

In The Movies, The Writer Is Just The Servant, The Employee.

I Fell Victim To The Temptation Of Every Autobiographer, To The Illusion That Since The Past Exists Only In One's Memories And The Words Which Strive Vainly To Encapsulate Them, It Is Possible To Create Past Events Simply By Saying They Occurred.

Rock N' Roll Was A Kid When I Was A Kid.

I Have Never Really Thought Of Myself As A Writer About Religion. And I Think One Of The Things That Happened To Me As A Result Of All That Is That I Think It Did For Some People, Many People, Obscure The Kind Of Writer That I Actually Am.

He Would Dream Of Discovering A Magic Optometrist From Whom He Would Purchase A Pair Of Green-tinged Spectacles Which Would Correct His Regrettable Myopia, And After That He Would Be Able To See Through The Dense, Blinding Air To The Fabulous World Beneath.

When We Stop Believing In Gods We Can Start Believing In Their Stories, I Retort. There Are Of Course No Such Things As Miracles, But If There Were And So Tomorrow We Woke Up To Find No More Believers On Earth, No More Devout Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Why Then, Sure The Beauty Of The Stories Would Be A Thing We Could Focus On Because They Wouldn't Be Dangerous Any More, They Would Become Capable Of Compelling The Only Belief That Leads To Truth, That Is, The Willing, Disbelieving Of The Reader In A Well-told Tale.

When People Use The Term Magic Realism, Usually They Only Mean 'magic' And They Don't Hear 'realism', Whereas The Way In Which Magic Realism Actually Works Is For The Magic To Be Rooted In The Real. It's Both Things. It's Not Just A Fairytale Moment. It's The Surrealism That Arises Out Of The Real.

People Can Do Bad Things With Free Speech As Well As Good. You Have To Defend The Ku Klux Klan As Well As Martin Luther King. It's Like That. If You're Going To Defend The Principle, Then You Have To Defend People Who Use The Principle Badly.

I'm Not Saying I Am Never Going To Fall In Love Again, But There Is No Need To Marry.

Falling In Love

Be Sure That You Go To The Author To Get At His Meaning, Not To Find Yours.

How Does Newness Come Into The World? How Is It Born? Of What Fusions, Translations, Conjoinings Is It Made? How Does It Survive, Extreme And Dangerous As It Is? What Compromises, What Deals, What Betrayals Of Its Secret Nature Must It Make To Stave Off The Wrecking Crew, The Exterminating Angel, The Guillotine? Is Birth Always A Fall? Do Angels Have Wings? Can Men Fly?

No, I Don't Think It's Fair To Label Islam 'violent.' But I Will Say That To My Knowledge, No Writer Has Ever Gone Into Hiding For Criticizing The Amish.

I Stand With Charlie Hebdo, As We All Must, To Defend The Art Of Satire, Which Has Always Been A Force For Liberty And Against Tyranny, Dishonesty And Stupidity.

I Stand With Charlie Hebdo, As We All Must, To Defend The Art Of Satire.

He Knew What He Knew: That The Real World Was Full Of Magic, So Magical Worlds Could Easily Be Real.

There Needs To Be A Thorough Examination, By Muslims Everywhere, Of Why It Is That The Faith They Love Breeds So Many Violent Mutant Strains.

When I'm Writing Books, Something Weird Happens; And The Result Is The Books Contain A Large Amount Of What You Could Call 'supernaturalism.' As A Writer, I Find I Need That To Explain The World I'm Writing About.

What Kind Of Idea Are You? Are You The Kind That Compromises, Does Deals, Accomodates Itself To Society, Aims To Find A Niche, To Survive; Or Are You The Cussed, Bloody-minded, Ramrod-backed Type Of Damnfool Notion That Would Rather Break Than Sway With The Breeze? – The Kind That Will Almost Certainly, Ninety-nine Times Out Of Hundred, Be Smashed To Bits; But, The Hundredth Time, Will Change The World.

Originality Is Dangerous. It Challenges, Questions, Overturns Assumptions, Unsettles Moral Codes.

If You Listen To The Urban Speech Patterns There You'll Find It's Quite Characteristic That A Sentence Will Begin In One Language, Go Through A Second Language And End In A Third. It's The Very Playful, Very Natural Result Of Juggling Languages. You Are Always Reaching For The Most Appropriate Phrase.

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.

When You Know What You're Against You Have Taken The First Step To Discovering What You're For.

Fundamentalists Of All Faiths Are The Fundamental Evil Of Our Time.

My Heart Broke Open And History Fell In.

Terror Is Glamour - Not Only, But Also. I Am Firmly Convinced That There's Something Like A Fascination With Death Among Suicide Bombers.

Names, Once They Are In Common Use, Quickly Become Mere Sounds, Their Etymology Being Buried, Like So Many Of The Earth's Marvels, Beneath The Dust Of Habit.

Our Lives Are Not What We Deserve; They Are, Let Us Agree, In Many Ways Deficient.

Acting Was Always My Unscratched Itch, When I Was In College And Even Afterwards.

The Accidents Of My Life Have Given Me The Ability To Make Stories In Which Different Parts Of The World Are Brought Together, Sometimes Harmoniously, Sometimes In Conflict, And Sometimes Both - Usually Both. The Difficulty In These Stories Is That If You Write About Everywhere You Can End Up Writing About Nowhere.

I Didn't Want To Become Some Embittered Old Hack Getting His Revenge For The Rest Of My Life. And I Didn't Want To Become Some Scared Creature Cowering In A Corner. I Remember Telling Myself Not To Carry The Hatred Around, Although I Know Where It Is. I Have It In A Trunk In Storage.

What Is Needed Is A Move Beyond Tradition, Nothing Less Than A Reform Movement To Bring The Core Concepts Of Islam Into The Modern Age, A Muslim Reformation To Combat Not Only The Jihadist Ideologues But Also The Dusty, Stifling Seminaries Of The Traditionalists, Throwing Open The Windows To Let In Much-needed Fresh Air.... It Is High Time, For Starters, That Muslims Were Able To Study The Revelation Of Their Religion As An Event Inside History, Not Supernaturally Above It.... Broad-mindedness Is Related To Tolerance; Open-mindedness Is The Sibling Of Peace.

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Tamara Ecclestone

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