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In Europe, The Enlightenment Of The 18th Century Was Seen As A Battle Against The Desire Of The Church To Limit Intellectual Freedom, A Battle Against The Inquisition, A Battle Against Religious Censorship. And The Victory Of The Enlightenment In Europe Was Seen As Pushing Religion Away From The Center Of Power. In America, At The Same Time, The Enlightenment Meant Coming To A Country Where People Were Not Going To Persecute You By Reason Of Your Religion. So It Meant A Liberation Into Religion. In Europe, It Was Liberation Out Of Religion.

-Salman Rushdie

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In Europe, The Enlightenment

Salman Rushdie

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In Europe, The Enlightenment Of The 18th Century Was Seen As A Battle Against The Desire Of The Church To Limit Intellectual Freedom, A Battle Against The Inquisition, A Battle Against Religious Censorship. And The Victory Of The Enlightenment In Europe Was Seen As Pushing Religion Away From The Center Of Power. In America, At The Same Time, The Enlightenment Meant Coming To A Country Where People Were Not Going To Persecute You By Reason Of Your Religion. So It Meant A Liberation Into Religion. In Europe, It Was Liberation Out Of Religion.

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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.

Madame Bovary And A Flying Carpet, They Are Both Untrue In The Same Way. Somebody Made Them Up.

People Would Come And Threaten Them. And They Would Respond By Putting The Book In The Window. Behind That, The Publishers, Many Of Whom Were Menaced And Receiving Anonymous Phone Calls Of The Very Menacing Kind And So, Almost Everybody - Not Everybody, But Almost Everybody Held The Line.

Certainly, The Hollywood Cinema, There's Almost Nothing Of Interest Coming Out Of There.

The Miniatures Of The Mughal Period Are Really The Pinnacle Of Indian Artistic Achievement. And Not A Single One Of Those Paintings Is Done By An Individual Artist.

No Story Comes From Nowhere; New Stories Are Born From Old.

I'm Not A Prophet, But I Always Thought It Was Natural For Dictatorships To Fall. I Remember In 1989, Two Months Before The Fall Of The Berlin Wall, Had You Said It Was Going To Happen No One Would Have Believed You. The System Seemed Powerful And Unbreakable. Suddenly Overnight It Blew Away Like Dust.

They Lived In A Great City, A Metropolis Of Many Narratives That Converged Briefly And Then Separated For Ever, Discovering Their Different Dooms In That Crowd Of Stories Through Which All Of Us, Following Our Own Destinies, Had To Push And Shove To Find Our Way Through, Or Out.

If Love Is A Yearning To Be Like (even To Become) The Beloved, Then Hatred, It Must Be Said, Can Be Engendered By The Same Ambition, When It Cannot Be Fulfilled.

Nothing Comes From Nothing, Thieflet; No Story Comes From Nowhere; New Stories Are Born From Old--it Is The New Combinations That Make Them New.

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.

I Only Met Margaret Thatcher Twice. The Thing That I Thought About Meeting Her Was How Extraordinarily Intelligent She Was. You Really Had To Be On Your Game Otherwise She'd Make Mincemeat Of You.

I've Never Rejected The World I Came From. To Be Rejected By It Is Horrible.

The Point Is Always Reached After Which The Gods No Longer Share Their Lives With Mortal Men And Women, They Die Or Wither Away Or Retire... Now That They've Gone, The High Drama's Over. What Remains Is Ordinary Human Life.

One Of The Problems With Defending Free Speech Is You Often Have To Defend People That You Find To Be Outrageous And Unpleasant And Disgusting.

You Start At The Stupid End Of The Book, And If You're Lucky You Finish At The Smart End.

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.

The Difference Between Memoir And Autobiography, As Far As I See It, Is That A Memoir Is There Primarily To Tell One Particular Story, Whereas An Autobiography Tries To Be A Full Account Of A Life.

The Answer To Religion Is Not No Religion, But Another Way Of Thinking Of It. Another Way Of Being In It.

Fundamentalism Isn't About Religion, It's About Power.

What's Real And What's True Aren't Necessarily The Same.

A Book Is Not Completed Till It's Read.

As I Look Back, I Feel A Touch Of Pride At My Younger Self's Dedication To Literature, Which Gave Him The Strength Of Mind To Resist The Blandishments Of The Enemies Of Promise. The Sirens Of Ad-land Sang Sweetly And Seductively, But I Thought Of Odysseus Lashing Himself To The Mast Of His Ship, And Somehow Stayed On Course.

The Sixty-minute Drama Form Has Become Very Rich.

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

Reality Is A Question Of Perspective; The Further You Get From The Past, The More Concrete And Plausible It Seems - But As You Approach The Present, It Inevitably Seems More And More Incredible.

We Are The Only Animals That Tell Stories To Understand The World We Live In.

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