Salman Rushdie Quotes

I've never been much of a craftsman, in an educated way. But I think just the experience of writing makes the avenues I follow a little more efficient in some ways. At the same time, when you're young, you're a little more fearless, and there's less of an internal critic.

I started out writing poems before I figured to put melodies to them and play the guitar. Somewhere, there's a book out there on all those early songs and poems. I hope no one ever finds it. I don't think it's my finest work.

A writer can't subtract or excise any of his/her past because doing so would erase the work produced during that time.

Anyone would be embarrassed of what they did at 15 or 16. I listen back to that first record, and I'm like, 'Compared to what my contemporaries were doing, it was crappy.' You listen to an early Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera song, and they are great pop songs. I just don't feel like on that first record I got anywhere near anything great.

I don't believe in the meteoric culture of anxiety, generally. Obviously, some people have it, some people are crippled by it, but most of the novelists I've ever known are in love with influence. They thrive on it.

In my experience, every book you write changes the conditions in which you write the next.

I saw an interview that I did with someone, and I was horrified by it. And I said to my wife, 'This is unbearable how I talk.'

I'm vaguely embarrassed by myself sometimes.

My scripts, they're pretty serious. I basically just describe stuff. I don't put too many notes and letters to the editors. But when I wrote 'KGBLT,' in parentheses I wrote, 'Well this is the best thing I've ever written. It will all be downhill from here. I'm so sorry for the rest of my career.'

Every now and then, a writer emerges who just gets better and better. These are the really exciting ones to encounter. Their novels carry the promise of so much more to come. Warwick Collins is one such writer.

I've always made a fool out of myself.

I'm a basket case. Yeah, you know, I put my foot in my mouth more than I speak properly.

I'm very grateful that anyone takes the time to read what I write, coming from people perceive to be exclusively a musical background and having no traditional schooling in writing.

My own accumulation of influences is actually what made me a writer in the first place.

I'm not saying that I don't like the stuff I put out into the world, because I genuinely enjoy my videos and think they are funny. What I'm saying is that I embrace the fact that I have a punchable face, and that if I could punch myself without feeling it, I would.

When you roast yourself, it makes everybody else comfortable.

I hear my voice and I cringe, I kind of hear Philadelphia in there, my hometown.

I don't think I am even the best I can be. I like to listen to other singers and learn from them, but I'm always working on myself, trying to improve, trying to be very tough with myself.

I always wanted to write. But honestly I'm glad I didn't do it back when I was twenty-five or so, when it's now clear to me that I was a very poor writer and could've ruined my career before it even started.

Some people will never let the grime thing go, but my fifth album is not meant to sound like my first album.

As artists, we're always going to like the songs we just now made over the songs we made a year ago.

I am such a sillybilly that I embarrass myself all the time.

The thing is, I've been writing for a long time now, trying to be a poet for the last 40 years, and it's still very difficult not to second-guess myself when reading my own work.

You pour your soul into your book, but you never know how it will be received, and when people like your baby, it's a great feeling.

Anything I wrote before the age of 17 is probably worth putting a pin in and moving on.