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1eafc44
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Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I've gone which would not have happened if I had not come
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Salman Rushdie |
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fed7012
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one could accept Muhammad as a genuine mystic--just as one could accept Joan of Arc's voices as having genuinely been heard by her, or the revelations of Saint John the Divine as being that troubled soul's 'real' experiences--without needing also to accept that, had one been standing next to the Prophet of Islam on Mount Hira that day, one would also have seen the Archangel.
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reality
revelation
stories
truth
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Salman Rushdie |
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ba132fa
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Later, when his desires had been satisfied, he slept in an odorous whorehouse, snoring lustily next to an insomniac tart, and dreamed. He could dream in seven languages: Italian, Spanic, Arabic, Persian, Russian, English and Portughese. He had picked up languages the way most sailors picked up diseases; languages were his gonorrhea, his syphilis, his scurvy, his ague,his plague. As soon as he fell asleep half the world started babbling in h..
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Salman Rushdie |
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97e6036
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The future, even when it was only a question-shrouded glimmer, would not be eclipsed by the past; even when death moved towards the centre of the stage, life went on fighting for equal rights.
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Salman Rushdie |
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3c23327
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Radvai se, che ne si maika v takiva vremena - otv'rna mu tia. - Zashchoto, ako beshe, shcheshe da se radvash, che dvamata ti skarani sinove otnovo shche se s'berat, no ednovremenno s tova shcheshe da se izp'lnish s's strakh, che i dvete ti detsa veroiatno shche sa m'rtvi. Protivorechieto na tova shchastie i tozi uzhas bi ti se storilo neponosimo. - Radvai se, che ne si m'zh - kaza v otgovor toi. - Zashchoto, shchom prestanem da spim, vizhda..
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Salman Rushdie |
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70867b9
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Rage made you the creature of those who enraged you, it gave them to much power. Rage killed the mind...
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Salman Rushdie |
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591c658
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Mahound comes to me for revelation, asking me to choose between monotheist and henotheist alternatives, and I'm just some idiot actor having a bhaenchud nightmare, what the fuck do I know, yaar, what to tell you, help. Help.
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islam
muhammad
muslim
religion
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Salman Rushdie |
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a5ec984
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The ancient wisdoms are modern nonsenses. Live in your own time, use what we know, and as you grow up, perhaps the human race will finally grow up with you and put aside childish things.
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Salman Rushdie |
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fa6760e
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Symbolic value of the pickling process: all the six hundred million eggs which gave birth to the population of India could fit inside a single, standard-sized pickle-jar; six hundred million spermatozoa could be lifted on a single spoon. Every pickle-jar (you will forgive me if I become florid for a moment) contains, therefore, the most exalted of possibilities: the feasibility of the chutnification of history; the grand hope of the picklin..
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life
origins
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Salman Rushdie |
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52af801
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Tum resmi gorebilenler, cercevenin disina adim atanlardir.
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Salman Rushdie |
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be4c97e
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One foreign correspondent came up to be friendly. He asked this man what he should think about what Khomeini had said. How seriously should he take it? Was it just a rhetorical flourish or something genuinely dangerous? "Oh, don't worry too much," the journalist said. "Khomeini sentences the president of the United States to death every Friday afternoon."
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Salman Rushdie |
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00ee58a
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H]as it really been so long since religions persecuted people, burning them as heretics, drowning them as witches, that you can't recognize religious persecution when you see it?" [
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freedom-of-thought
heresy
intolerance
orthodoxy
persecution
religion
witch-hunts
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Salman Rushdie |
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2b60374
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Once the god-squaddie supreme, she was now possessed of the zeal of the apostate and came on like an atheistic stormtrooper.
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Salman Rushdie |
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bd0c651
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And eventually in that house where everyone, even the fugitive hiding in the cellar from his faceless enemies, finds his tongue cleaving dryly to the roof of his mouth, where even the sons of the house have to go into the cornfield with the rickshaw boy to joke about whores and compare the length of their members and whisper furtively about dreams of being film directors (Hanif's dream, which horrifies his dream-invading mother, who believe..
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history
mothers
movies
penises
sexuality
silence
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Salman Rushdie |
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592cde0
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We, the living, must find what space we can alongside them; the giant dead whom we cannot tie down, though we grasp at their hair, though we rope them while they sleep
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Salman Rushdie |
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11c961b
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How treacherous history is! Half-truths, ignorance, deceptions, false trails, errors and lies, and buried somewhere in between all of that, the truth, in which it is easy to lose faith, of which it is consequently easy to say, it's a chimera, there's no such thing, everything is relative, one man's absolute belief is another man's fairy tale; but about which we insist, we insist most emphatically, that it is too important an idea to give up..
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Salman Rushdie |
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a3b6c35
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Our group takes what I'll call a Post-Atheist stance. Our position is that god is a creation of human beings, who only exists because of the clap-hands-if-you-believe-in-fairies principle. If enough people were sensible enough not to clap hands, then this Tinker Bell god would die. However, unfortunately, billions of human beings are still prepared to defend their belief in some sort of god-fairy, and, as a result, god exists. What's worse ..
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belief
god
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Salman Rushdie |
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11f7cbb
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The city of Jahilia is built entirely of sand, its structures formed of the desert whence it rises. It is a sight to wonder at: walled, four-gated, the whole of it a miracle worked by its citizens, who have learned the trick of transforming the fine white dune-sand of those forsaken parts, - the very stuff of inconstancy, - the quintessence of unsettlement, shifting, treachery, lack-of-form, - and have turned it, by alchemy, into the fabric..
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Salman Rushdie |
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0aa53cf
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O my vanity I am an arrogant man, is this weakness, is it just a dream of power? Must I betray myself for a seat on the council? Is this sensible and wise or is it hollow and self-loving? I don't even know if the Grandee is sincere. Does he know? Perhaps not even he. I am weak and he's strong, the offer gives him many ways of ruining me. But I, too, have much to gain. The souls of the city, of the world, surely they are worth three angels? ..
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Salman Rushdie |
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83659e8
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Midnight has many children; the offspring of Independence were not all human. Violence, corruption, poverty, generals, chaos, greed and pepperpot... I had to go into exile to learn that the children of midnight were more varied that I-- even I--had dreamed.
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Salman Rushdie |
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3eb7060
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In spite of all my efforts to create a neat, tidy, obedient, moderate, unexceptional persona, I was simply too weird for them; until that is, my first female tutor was hired.
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Salman Rushdie |
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5e04375
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Human life was rarely shapely, only intermittently meaningful, its clumsiness the inevitable consequence of the victory of content over form, of what and when over how and why.
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Salman Rushdie |
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5ea4be5
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It did not occur to any of them that their decision was born of a colossal sense of entitlement, this notion that they could just step away from yesterday and start tomorrow as if it wasn't a part of the same week, to move beyond memory and roots and language and race into the land of the self-made self, which is another way of saying, America.
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privilege
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Salman Rushdie |
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f137f3a
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and I began to wonder if we were moral beings at all or simply savages who defined their private bigotries as necessary ethics, as the only ways to be.
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Salman Rushdie |
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8a3f134
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every story one chooses to tell is a kind of censorship, it prevents the telling of other tales (...)
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Salman Rushdie |
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8d50c6c
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Happy endings must come at the end of something,' the Walrus pointed out. 'If they happen in the middle of a story, or an adventure, or the like, all they do is cheer things up for a while. 'That'll do,' said Haroun.
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Salman Rushdie |
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632362c
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Now the only person you think is lying to you is the expert who actually knows something. He's the one not to believe because he's the elite and the elites are against the people, they will do the people down. To know the truth is to be elite. If you say you saw God's face in a watermelon, more people will believe you than if you find the Missing Link, because if you're a scientist then you're elite. Reality TV is fake but it's not elite so..
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Salman Rushdie |
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2412902
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Things--even people--have a way of leaking into each other," I explain, "like flavors when you cook."
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Salman Rushdie |
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9135fb8
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But sixteen years without optimism had taken a heavy toll;
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Salman Rushdie |
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903e579
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Sometimes it's just over and you can't make it all right. Justification by works: an overrated idea.
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Salman Rushdie |
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a224bc7
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I am by nature an inward man, he said silently into the disconnected phone. I have struggled, in my fashion, to find my way towards an appreciation of the high things, towards a small measure of fineness. On good days I felt it was within my grasp, somewhere within me, somewhere within. But it eluded me. I have become embroiled, in things, in the world and in its messes, and I cannot resist. The grotesque has me, as before the quotidian had..
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Salman Rushdie |
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832e4f1
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A man who sets out to make himself up is taking on the Creator's role, according to one way of seeing things; he's unnatural, a blasphemer, an abomination of abominations. From another angle, you could see pathos in him, heroism in his struggle, in his willingness to risk: not all mutants survive. Or, consider him socio-politically: most migrants learn, and can become disguises. Our own false descriptions to counter the falsehoods invented ..
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Salman Rushdie |
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31e5ca5
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Morality came before religion, and religion was our ancestors' way of responding to that built-in need. And if that was so, then it was perfectly possible to lead a good life, to have a strong sense of right and wrong, without ever letting God and his harpies into the room.
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Salman Rushdie |
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21aed19
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We know the force of gravity, but not its origins; and to explain why we become attached to our birthplaces we pretend that we are trees and speak of roots. Look under your feet. You will not find gnarled growths sprouting through the soles. Roots, I sometimes think, are a conservative myth, designed to keep us in our places.
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Salman Rushdie |
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f2c49ba
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w z nsly z bchhhy jdwyy bwd khh bsyr skhttr z nsl wl khwhd shd, bchhhyy khh srnwshtshn r z pyshgwyn w khtr shnsn nkhwhnd prsyd, blkhh an r dr khwrh shmgyn rdh khwd shkhl khwhnd dd.
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بچه
جادو
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Salman Rushdie |
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1055a1b
|
Is it possible that evil is never total, that its victory, no matter how overwhelming, is never absolute? Consider this fallen man. He sought without remorse to shatter the mind of a fellow human being; and exploited, to do so, an entirely blameless woman, at least partly owing to his own impossible and voyeuristic desire for her. Yet this same man has risked death, with scarcely any hesitation, in a foolhardy rescue attempt.
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Salman Rushdie |
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e7d451f
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After they stopped torturing him they locked him in the jail cell again and pretended they would forget him... Then, eventually, and unexpectedly, release. Into ignominy, oblivion, married life.
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Salman Rushdie |
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4fea03c
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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.
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Salman Rushdie |
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f174d5d
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Rowan (Atkinson) pochmurne prikyvoval a dodal, ze nedavno v jednom televiznim skeci pouzil zaznam klecicich muslimu pri patecni modlitbe, podle nej v Teheranu, s nasledujicim komentarem:" A patrani po ajatollahove kontaktni cocce pokracuje."
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Salman Rushdie |
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9db712d
|
Why demons, when man himself is a demon?' the Nobel Laureate Singer's 'last demon' asked from his attic in Tishevitz. To which Chamcha's sense of balance, his much-to-be-said-for-and-against reflex, wished to add: 'And why angels, when man is angelic too?
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Salman Rushdie |
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7b2a7c8
|
the children of the hour of darkness were born, I'm afraid, in the midst of the age of darkness; so that although we found it easy to be brilliant, we were always confused about being good.
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Salman Rushdie |
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248986b
|
children are the vessels into which adults pour their poison, and it was the poison of grown-ups which did for us.
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Salman Rushdie |
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ce3f439
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When you have things, then there is time to dream; when you don't, you fight.
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Salman Rushdie |
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8803a70
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man is sane only to the extent that he subscribes to a previously-agreed construction of reality.
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Salman Rushdie |