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India, The New Myth--a Collective Fiction In Which Anything Was Possible, A Fable Rivalled Only By The Two Other Mighty Fantasies: Money And God.
-Salman Rushdie
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India, The New Myth--a

Salman Rushdie
...
India, The New Myth--a Collective Fiction In Which Anything Was Possible, A Fable Rivalled Only By The Two Other Mighty Fantasies: Money And God.

Understanding the Quote: "india, the new myth--a collective fiction in which anything was possible, a..."

This quote by Salman Rushdie reflects deeply on the theme of two. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Two, Fables, India, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Salman Rushdie interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie is celebrated for insightful thoughts on two and fables. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Two
Fables
India
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Two
Optimism
I Have Been Only The Humblest Jugglers-with-facts; And That, In A Country Where The Truth Is What It Is Instructed To Be, Reality Quite Literally Ceases To Exist, So That Everything Becomes Possible Except What We Are Told Is The Case; And Maybe This Was The Difference Between My Indian Childhood And Pakistani Adolescence--that In The First I Was Beset By An Infinity Of Alternative Realities, While In The Second I Was Adrift, Disoriented, Amid An Equally Infinite Number Of Falsenesses, Unrealities And Lies.
Country
Lying
Reality
I Know That When People Pull Apart, They Usually Employ Misunderstanding As A Weapon, Deliberately Getting Hold Of The Stick's Wrong End, Impaling Themselves On Its Point In Order To Prove The Perfidy Of The Other.
Order
People
Weapons
When You're Writing For The Screen You're Really Thinking All The Time Of What You Have To Do To Make Sure That They Have The Information That They Need, That The Emotional Thread Is Not Snapped, That The Story Moves At The Right Speed, To Keep The Audience Hopefully Sitting On The Edge Of Their Seats Or Else Weeping Or Laughing.
Moving
Writing
Emotional
If You're Offended, It's Your Problem.
Problem
Ifs
Offended
I've Been Worrying About God A Little Bit Lately... It Seems Like He's Been In A Bad Mood. And I Think It Has To Do With The Quality Of Lovers He's Been Getting.
Thinking
Worry
Quality
A Mature Society Understands That At The Heart Of Democracy Is Argument.
Heart
Democracy
Argument
Sometimes You Find Your Voice By Trying To Write Like People, And Sometimes You Find It By Trying To Write Unlike People.
Writing
Voice
People
Free Societies...are Societies In Motion, And With Motion Comes Tension, Dissent, Friction. Free People Strike Sparks, And Those Sparks Are The Best Evidence Of Freedom's Existence.
People
Atheism
Society
In Iran, Fundamentalism Was Fuelled To An Extent By The Regime Of The Shah Being Supported By The West.
Iran
West
Regimes
When I Was Growing Up, Everyone Around Me Was Fond Of Fooling Around With Words. It Was Certainly Common In My Family, But I Think It Is Typical Of Bombay, And Maybe Of India, That There Is A Sense Of Play In The Way People Use Language.
Growing Up
Thinking
Play
The Act Of Migration Puts Into Crisis Everything About The Migrating Individual Or Group, Everything About Identity And Selfhood And Culture And Belief. So If This Is A Novel About Migration It Must Be That Act Of Putting In Question. It Must Perform The Crisis It Describes.
Identity
Migration
Groups
Everybody Loves 'the Wire,' And I Think It's Okay, But In The End It's Just A Police Series.
Thinking
Police
Wire
Now I Know What A Ghost Is. Unfinished Business, That's What.
Unfinished Business
Ghost
Unfinished
American Literature Has Always Been Immigrant.
Literature
American Literature
Immigrants
It Doesn't Matter Whether Characters Are Real People Or Not; If They're Not Vivid On The Page, Then The Reader Doesn't Care About Them That Much, And, If The Reader Doesn't Care About Them That Much, Then They Don't Care What Happens To Them.
Real
Character
People
I Learned: The First Lesson Of My Life: Nobody Can Face The World With His Eyes Open All The Time.
Eye
World
Lessons
‎no People Whose Word For 'yesterday' Is The Same As Their Word For 'tomorrow' Can Be Said To Have A Firm Grip On The Time.
Yesterday
People
Tomorrow
With Death Comes Honesty.
Death
Honesty
I Discovered That If You Find The Language To Talk To Younger Readers, Children Can Accept Anything.
Children
Language
Accepting
Acting Was Always My Unscratched Itch, When I Was In College And Even Afterwards.
College
Acting
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.
Book
Phones
People
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.
Thinking
People
Kind
If You're On A Freeway And Want To Know If You're Being Followed, What You Do Is Enormously Vary Your Speed. You Accelerate To 100 And Slow Down To 30 And Then Accelerate Again. In A City, You Make A Lot Of Turns Against The Stream Of Traffic. You Go Around A Roundabout Twice.
Cities
Want
Speed
Discovery Is Fun. I Am Incredibly Open To Everything.
Fun
Discovery
Among The Great Struggles Of Man-good/evil, Reason/unreason, Etc.-there Is Also This Mighty Conflict Between The Fantasy Of Home And The Fantasy Of Away, The Dream Of Roots And The Mirage Of The Journey.
Dream
Struggle
Home
The Suicide Bomber's Imagination Leads Him To Believe In A Brilliant Act Of Heroism, When In Fact He Is Simply Blowing Himself Up Pointlessly And Taking Other People's Lives.
Suicide
Believe
People
I Think People Direct Good Films When They Feel Personal To Them, Not Because It's A Famous Book Or Something. It Has To Something Move Over That And Somehow Become Personal To The Director.
Moving
Book
Thinking
Exile Is A Dream Of A Glorious Return. Exile Is A Vision Of Revolution: Elba, Not St Helena. It Is An Endless Paradox: Looking Forward By Always Looking Back. The Exile Is A Ball Hurled High Into The Air.
Dream
Air
Vision
Is Birth Always A Fall?
Fall
Birth
The Desire For Story Is Very, Very Deep In Human Beings. We Are The Only Creature In The World That Does This; We Are The Only Creature That Tells Stories, And Sometimes Those Are True Stories And Sometimes Those Are Made Up Stories. Then There Are The Larger Stories, The Grand Narratives That We Live In, Which Are Things Like Nation And Family And Clan And So On. Those Stories Are Considered To Be Treated Reverentially. They Need To Be Part Of The Way In Which We Conduct The Discourse Of Our Lives And To Prevent People From Doing Something Very Damaging To Human Nature.
People
Desire
World
It Is Commonly And, I Believe, Accurately Said Of Pakistan That Her Women Are Much More Impressive Than Her Men.
Believe
Men
Pakistan
Our Lives Are Not What We Deserve; They Are, Let Us Agree, In Many Ways Deficient.
Way
Agree
Our Lives
I Don't Feel American. I Do Feel Like A New Yorker. I Think There's A Real Distinction There. A City Allows You To Become A Citizen Even When You're Not A National.
Real
Thinking
Cities
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?
Betrayal
Fall
Angel
Of Course, There Is Nothing Intrinsic Linking Any Religion With Any Act Of Violence. The Crusades Don't Prove That Christianity Was Violent. The Inquisition Doesn't Prove That Christianity Tortures People. But That Christianity Did Torture People.
People
Violence
Christianity
Out-of-step Intellectuals Like Noam Chomsky And The Deceased Edward Said Have Often Been Dismissed As Crazy Extremists, 'anti-american,' And In Mr. Said's Case Even, Absurdly, As Apologists For Palestinian 'terrorism.'
Crazy
Steps
Terrorism
A Man Who Catches History's Eye Is Thereafter Bound To A Mistress From Whom He Will Never Escape.
Eye
Men
Mistress
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.
Dust
Names
Sound
For A Fellow Who's Not To Much To Look At, You Have The Instincts Of A Champion.
Champion
Looks
Instinct
What One Writer Can Make In The Solitude Of One Room Is Something No Power Can Easily Destroy.
Powerful
Being Alone
Creativity
There Is A Point Beyond Which Conciliation Looks Like Capitulation. I Do Not Believe I Passed That Point, But Others Have Thought Otherwise.
Believe
Looks
Capitulation
‘respect For Religion’ Has Become A Code Phrase Meaning ‘fear Of Religion.’ Religions, Like All Other Ideas, Deserve Criticism, Satire, And, Yes, Our Fearless Disrespect.
Inspirational
Life
Ideas
In The Movies, The Writer Is Just The Servant, The Employee.
Employee
Servant
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.
Courage
Sleep
Names
Free Speech Is The Whole Thing, The Whole Ball Game. Free Speech Is Life Itself.
Freedom
Games
Speech
One Of The Strange Things About Violent And Authoritarian Regimes Is They Don't Like The Glare Of Negative Publicity. If You Can Make Them Sufficiently Uncomfortable, They Frequently Respond By Doing What You Need Them To Do In The Spirit Of Setting People Free Or Ceasing Arrests.
People
Negative
Needs
Chekhov Is This Poet Of Melancholy And Isolation And Of Wishing You Were Somewhere Else Than Where You Are.
Somewhere Else
Wish
Isolation
If You Live In Free Countries, You Don't Have To Spend All Your Life Arguing About Freedom Because It Is All Around You. It Seems Redundant To Make A Lot Of Noise About Something When, In Fact, There It Is. But If Someone Tries To Remove It, It Becomes Important For You To Formulate Your Own Defenses Of It.
Country
Important
Trying
If There Is A Choice Between Absolute Safety And Freedom, Then Freedom Must Always Prevail.
Safety
Choices
Absolutes
When 'midnight's Children' Came Out, People In The West Tended To Respond To The Fantasy Elements In The Novel, To Praise It In Those Terms. In India, People Read It Like A History Book.
Children
Book
People
Where There Is No Belief, There Is No Blasphemy.
Belief
Blasphemy
The Writers Of The French Enlightenment Had Deliberately Used Blasphemy As A Weapon, Refusing To Accept The Power Of The Church To Set Limiting Points On Thought.
Church
Enlightenment
Weapons
I Have No Problem With People's Religious Beliefs. I Just Don't Happen To Have Any.
Religious
People
Belief
What I've Always Seen In Writers And Artists Is The Courage It Takes To Make An Original Work Of Art. I Think The Real Risks In Literature Are Linguistic And Intellectual, And I Hope We Can Highlight Those, As Well As Political Courage.
Art
Real
Thinking
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.
Drama
Men
Ordinary
Anyone Who Has Had The Experience Of Going Through American Security Checks Knows The Purpose Of These Checks Is Not To Make You Safer; It's Just To Annoy You.
Purpose
Annoying
Checks
Children Like Being A Little Scared, But They Don't Want To Be Disturbed.
Children
Want
Littles
One Of The Things I Know From The Study Of History Is That History Surprises You. History Is Not Written. It's Not Inevitable.the Victory Of Evil Is Not Certain.
Evil
Victory
Study
To Respect Louis Farrakhan, We Must Understand, Is Simply To Agree With Him... If Dissent Is Now Also To Be Thought Of As A Form Of 'dissing,' Then We Have Indeed Succumbed To The Thought Police.
Police
Religion
Dissing
Human Beings Understand Themselves And Shape Their Futures By Arguing And Challenging And Questioning And Saying The Un-sayable, Not By Bowing The Knee Whether To Gods Or To Men.
Men
Challenges
Shapes
Good Advice Is Rarer Than Rubies.
Advice
Rubies
Good Advice
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