Salman Rushdie Quotes

I raised you to be a thoroughbred. When thoroughbreds run, they wear blinders to keep their eyes focused straight ahead with no distractions, no other horses. They hear the crowd, but they don’t listen. They just run their own race. That’s what you have to do. Don’t listen to anyone comparing you to me or to anyone else. You just run your own race.

If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done.

I'm going to keep living my life the way I've been living my life, and nothing is going to change that even if the Olympics are coming up.

No ground gained was ever relinquished.

Once I decide to do something, I want to win in the worst way. I will do anything within the law to win.

Don't let anyone tell you no. Do it with conviction, do it with passion, and you'll find a way

Enter every activity without giving mental recognition to the possibility of defeat.

You really have to focus on what you're doing and just plow ahead no matter what hurdles are thrown in front of you.

As long as we have faith in our own cause and an unconquerable will to win, victory will not be denied us.

I'll keep going till my face falls off.

At 3 years old, I was telling people that I was going to be a star. I never had a plan B. And I've never compromised my integrity to get what I have.

I was a fighter and very determined. There was no way I was going to back out without winning.

I was brought up to believe that there is no such thing as failure as long as I'm trying my best. So I've had a 'blood, guts and glory' approach through my whole life.

I've always done things my way.

It's the constant and determined effort that breaks down all resistance, sweeps away all obstacles.

I have yet to meet anyone quite so stubborn as myself and animated by this overpowering passion that leaves me no time for thought or anything else. I have, in fact, no interest in life outside racing cars.

At this stage of my life, I've dedicated myself to playing what I want to play, how I want to play it for the rest of my time. Regardless of whether one might like it or one might not like it, this is where I am.

The point is not to take the world's opinion as a guiding star but to go one's way in life and working unerringly, neither depressed by failure nor seduced by applause.

Indomitable perseverance in a business, properly understood, always ensures ultimate success.

My focus never wavered; I never accepted the film was not going to be finished.

To be a tennis champion, you have to be inflexible. You have to be stubborn. You have to be arrogant. You have to be selfish and self-absorbed. Kind of tunnel vision almost.

My friends, no matter how rough the road may be, we can and we will, never, never surrender to what is right.

John Waters has certainly gotten to a place in his life where he doesn't do anything he doesn't want to do. He's always been that way, but at this point, he's greatly respected for it.

[He was] Resolved to die in the last dyke of prevarication.

Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he will not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say "In spite of all!" has the calling for politics.