Salman Rushdie Quotes

I cannot live anywhere else except India.

I want to clear this once and for all. I was born in Hong Kong. I grew up in Japan and China. London is not home for me. I was there only for three years before I moved to India, but that's probably why I am connected with it. London is definitely not the place I consider my home. It's India that I consider home.

We made no inquiries about India or about the families people had left behind. When our ways of thinking had changed, and we wished to know, it was too late. I know nothing of the people on my father's side; I know only that some of them came from Nepal.

Part of my whole project from the beginning was to make an absent world present for my parents, which was India.

When I came to India, it's just a different country, but the culture was same that I grew up in.

I'm an Asian guy growing up in London so I see myself as British, but India is part of my culture.

I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when I am in the middle of a good book. Books are for me, it must be said, the most important thing.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear was kind of my first important book

I get daily e-mails from Afghans who thank me for writing this book [The Kite Runner], as they feel a slice of their story has been told by one of their own. So, for the most part, I have been overwhelmed with the kindness of my fellow Afghans.

I really knew almost nothing about Silicon Valley. I read that Steve Jobs book and watched a bunch of documentaries, and read the book about Mark Zuckerberg. I tried to learn some stuff, but there are consultants on the Silicon Valley show that know so much about it where you can get answers. To me, it's more important to get the particulars about that type of person as opposed to the specifics of the technology world.

January 8 has been a lucky day for me. I have started all my books on that day, and all of them have been well received by the readers. I write eight to ten hours a day until I have a first draft, then I can relax a little. I am very disciplined. I write in silence and solitude. I light a candle to call inspiration and the muses, and I surround myself with pictures of the people I love, dead and alive.

In the United States it's not important which religion you adhere to, as long as you have one.

Hair has always been important.

I don't think a lot of people in America understand what Indians are. And that's our fault, a little. We tend to forget our roots a bit. As kids we think, If I'm too Indian, I'll be put in a box, and people will think of me as different. They'll think I'm weird, because I eat Indian food or my name is difficult to pronounce.

I think the path to becoming a writer has become more through the novel. It's easier to get a novel published than a book of stories, obviously, especially through big publishers.

Somebody said, 'Hey, there is a lull in your career. Why don't you write books about your [dyslexia]?' We are currently writing our 34th novel.

For a novelist, it’s kind of an onerous burden to represent an entire culture. That said, I’m in a unique position to speak on behalf of Afghanistan on certain issues that I feel are important, particularly the issue of Afghan refugees.

When you're younger you have so many ideas about yourself; everything is important. It's not when you look back, nothing is that important. It's only life.

You know what I love about Haruki Murakami's books? He's so easy to read. You get three pages in and you have to finish the whole thing.

The most important things in our intimate lives can't be discussed with strangers, except in books.

You take a book, and what can you do with a book? Can you cook an egg on a book? No. Can you dig a hole? No. Is it a good weapon? No. The fact that it's good for nothing kind of makes it almost all-important.

What I do is so important to me. It’s like being a parent, in some ways, of a super-demanding , high-achieving child, with a cry that sounds really cool on the radio.

The best moment is when you walk into a bookstore and see a pile of your books - that is the oddest experience in the world!

There is a lot of anxiety in India about writers selling out to foreign audiences, but I’m neither flattering the Indian audience nor the American audience. I’m uneasily somewhere in the middle.

I read the bible often, not just to prepare for "Noah". I believe it is a very important book.