Salman Rushdie Quotes

More or less, I am always saying, 'Let's do what has not been done.'

I love to play things that are out-of-the-box. It's just that I don't always get the chance to do it!

In life, a lot of great ideas sound insane or absurd at first.

All creative people want to do the unexpected.

I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you're going to innovate.

What's missing from pop music is danger.

I feel every day that everything I create - everything I do - I want it to be a risk. I think when you take the big swings - and I've done plenty of big swings that I was told were never going to work - those are always the things that break through.

I like to try and be outside of the box or do things that other people aren't doing.

Follow your instincts. Do the kind of writing you love to do and do best. 'Stiff' was an oddball book - I mean, a funny book about cadavers? - and I worried that it would be too unconventional. In the end, that's what has made it a success, I think.

If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative.

It's all about risk-taking when you're making an album. Don't be scared to do weird things sometimes.

Since I was in my early twenties, at ABC, I was always only interested in things that were not already being done.

I stray away from formulaic, the formatted.

Everyone is trying to do something that hasn't been done and that's a really good thing. You can only do so much with a story and some scripts don't give you the opportunities and other scripts do give you the opportunities to do things that haven't been done before.

You need a little bit of insanity to do great things.

There's real peril in trying to repeat yourself, and apply rules that applied to something else to a new project.

Well, when you're trying to create things that are new, you have to be prepared to be on the edge of risk.

I don't like the idea of fitting into a mould so as to conform. What I like is the danger, the difference - being unpredictable.

When you create something new, you're breaking tradition - which is an act of defiance.

All I know is, I'm trying to do things that are a little different whenever I can.

I think when you take the big swings - and I've done plenty of big swings that I was told were never going to work - those are always the things that break through.

I'm someone who always wants to do everything differently. If I have a pattern, I'd rather I didn't have a pattern. I want every book to be unpredictable and new. Damn it!

I always like to do something different, something unusual, stray off the path a bit.

We've never tried to fit any mould because we already broke the one we started.

I guess I still have this motto: 'What else can I get away with?' And unpredictability in film - that's the hardest thing there is.