Salman Rushdie Quotes

Usually you tend to glean much more information about your character from what other people say about you, rather than how it's described in the books.

People are inclined to say that I am Ramona. I'm not sure that's true, but I did share some experiences with her.

What I do shows people what kind of person I am.

This book, when I am dead, will be A little faint perfume of me. People who knew me well will say, She really used to think that way.

I think of myself as a human being first and foremost, and secondly as a person whose profession is acting. If people want to make that into something more or less, that's up to them.

Sometimes I pretend not to look at my own characters, because that's like different people getting off with your girlfriend or something.

I am a character, so that's the problem. There are many, many levels to how I behave. Some people might associate being Marilyn Manson as having lipstick on, but I don't really have some sort of other lifestyle.

I think of part of myself as a very passionate person, but I don't think that comes across. I don't know where it comes from, that reserve or veneer of British niceness. But it doesn't bother me if other people don't spot the passion. I know it's there.

I don't have all that great an awareness of how people see me in life. I don't find myself thinking about it a lot.

I don't really see myself that way, as some typical sexy young ingénue. I've never been that way. And, for a while, there was a disconnect between who I am and how I present myself on a public platform. That was because I didn't necessarily feel comfortable sharing that much of myself with other people who I didn't know.

Maybe I'm seeing myself in a different way than the people in the audience see me, 'cause to me, I think I look like a ballerina and I feel like a ballerina. But maybe I'm not seeing what other people are seeing.

It's funny what [producer Richard Zanuck said about even though you can't quite place when the book or the story came into your life, and I do vaguely remember roughly five years old reading versions of Alice in Wonderland, but the thing is the characters. You always know the characters. Everyone knows the characters and they're very well-defined characters, which I always thought was fascinating. Most people who haven't read the book definitely know the characters and reference them.

I'll never accept that I'm a sex symbol. That will mean that someone is a bit too fond of himself. If it happens, I think it's certainly going to be odd. People shouldn't see me as a sex symbol. I'm really just Henry. I'm just telling a story. I could be playing an incredibly unpleasant character who's not sexually attractive at all in my next movie. So I've no expectations at all.

Most of these - most people's stage personas are created out of the flotsam and jetsam of their internal geography.

Books can change your life. Some of the most influential people in our lives are characters we meet in books.

I'm really much more like Phil Potter from [the 1979 film] Starting Over. People do think I'm the Bandit [from Smokey and the Bandit ], and I'm a lot more serious than that.

It is thus with most of us; we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.

A lot of people misunderstand me. That's because they don't know me at all.

What ends up happening is people form images and the image they form is, in some ways, what they want it to be. The idea of trying to correct the image is something I'm not interested in doing.

So yes, the roles are getting more and more like me. But that's because Xena was so entirely unlike me. Most people aren't really aware of that.

People who know me, know who I am.

When my first book came out, it was very disorienting. My health went south. I didn't know how to relate to people. I thought, "Now I have this way to be in the world that's going to be wonderful. It'll be like driving a great car, really streamlined." But it actually was difficult because, if you have a public persona, something you don't fully have control over, it's more like being in a car with controls you don't really understand.

Character lives in a man, reputation outside of him.

When I'm traveling to promote my book, I feel like an artful impostor. What I really am is when I'm in my (painter's) studio and when I'm writing. With actors, it's the same thing. They're kind of artful impostors in public. When you get to know them, they're different people.

A Dickens character to me is a theatrical projection of a character. Not that it isn't real. It's real, but in that removed sense. But Sherlock Holmes is simply there. I would be astonished if I went to 221½ B Baker Street and didn't find him.