Salman Rushdie Quotes

People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it's the other way around.

Power consists to a large extent in deciding what stories will be told.

You small mortals don't realize the power of your stories.

How [stories] are told, who tells them, when they’re told, how many stories are told — are really dependent on power.

Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person.

There is something to be said about laying bare the vocabulary of the aristocratic measure, right? There's something to be said about allowing the powerless to tell their own story.

Speaking generally, I think it's useful to acknowledge explicitly the power imbalance between a journalist and the protagonists in a story about poor people, even to make that imbalance part of the story - and to redress it, narratively, where you can.

I think it's a shame that something as creative and vital to the nature of the human species as story-telling is largely controlled by the soulless cretins known as publishers.

If you aren't telling a good story, nobody thinks you died too soon; they just think you died.

I just think that also controlling women is a way to control the whole narrative. And so I think when you've oppressed a people for a really long time, you're terrified to give them any power because they may have some reflection of how horrible you've been and you're terrified of being treated that way. All that we want is to be our best selves, but that's hard for them to understand.

I think there are a lot of great journalists out there. I don't find much fault in the journalist in general; I think everybody would like to break a good story.

I think the world should be represented on television and for the longest its been limited. Ethnic stories specifically need variety in content period.

Stories are propaganda, virii that slide past your critical immune system and insert themselves directly into your emotions.

That’s how stories happen — with a turning point, an unexpected twist. There’s only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.

So I decided to make a film about our need to tell stories, to own our stories, to understand them, and to have them heard.

When we deny our stories, They define us. When we own our stories, we get to write the ending.

So many stories are determined before they start.

Storytelling wise, you've gotta take it as far as you can possibly take it with each individual movie. If you're holding out something for a sequel or some cliff-hanger, that's not how I think of a satisfying story.

We cannot choose where to start and stop. Our stories are the tellers of us.

There are people. There are stories. The people think they shape the stories, but the reverse if often closer to the truth. Stories shape the world. They exist independently of people, and in places quite devoid of man, there may yet be mythologies.

I think great filmmakers will always talk in terms of storytelling. These guys were always about the story. That is how I love to talk about a film.

Only library books speak with such wordless eloquence of the power good stories hold over us.

It's funny, but I think my stories - the good ones - they're much smarter than I am.

Because some stories end, but old stories go on, and you gotta dance to the music if you want to stay ahead

I like a good story well told. That is the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself.