“I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I'm gone which would not have happened if I had not come.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Midnight's Children
“Memory's truth, because memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else's version more than his own.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Midnight's Children
“We all owe death a life.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Midnight's Children
“To understand just one life you have to swallow the world ... do you wonder, then, that I was a heavy child?”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Midnight's Children
“What's real and what's true aren't necessarily the same.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Midnight's Children
“Most of what matters in our lives takes place in our absence.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Midnight's Children
“No people whose word for 'yesterday' is the same as their word for 'tomorrow' can be said to have a firm grip on the time.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Midnight's Children
“What can't be cured must be endured.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Midnight's Children
“Children are the vessels into which adults pour their poison.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Midnight's Children
“Who what am I? My answer: I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I’ve gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each ‘I’, every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you’ll have to swallow the world.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Midnight's Children
“Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Midnight's Children
“To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Midnight's Children
“I learned: the first lesson of my life: nobody can face the world with his eyes open all the time.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Midnight's Children
“Whores and writers, Mahound. We are the people you can't forgive.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Midnight's Children
“I admit it: above all things, I fear absurdity.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Midnight's Children
“Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I've gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each "I", everyone of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you'll have to swallow a world.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Midnight's Children
“perhaps, if one wishes to remain an individual in the midst of the teeming multitudes, one must make oneself grotesque.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Midnight's Children
“Things, even people have a way of leaking into each other like flavours when you cook.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Midnight's Children
“Unless, of course, there's no such thing as chance;...in which case, we should either-optimistically-get up and cheer, because if everything is planned in advance, then we all have a meaning and are spared the terror of knowing ourselves to be random, without a why; or else, of course, we might-as pessimists-give up right here and now, understanding the futility of thought decision action, since nothing we think makes any difference anyway, things will be as they will. Where, then, is optimism? In fate or in chaos?”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Midnight's Children
“What you were is forever who you are.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Midnight's Children
“For every snake, there is a ladder; for every ladder,a snake”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Midnight's Children
“Everything has shape, if you look for it. There is no escape from form.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Midnight's Children
“India, the new myth--a collective fiction in which anything was possible, a fable rivalled only by the two other mighty fantasies: money and God.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Midnight's Children
“There is nothing like a War for the reinvention of lives...”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Midnight's Children
“...because silence, too, has an echo, hollower and longer-lasting than the reverberations of any sound.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Midnight's Children
“What grows best in the heat: fantasy; unreason; lust.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Midnight's Children
“I fell victim to the temptation of every autobiographer, to the illusion that since the past exists only in one's memories and the words which strive vainly to encapsulate them, it is possible to create past events simply by saying they occurred.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Midnight's Children
“What had been (at the beginning) no bigger than a full stop had expanded into a comma, a word, a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter; now it was bursting into more complex developments, becoming, one might say, a book - perhaps an encylopaedia - even a whole language...”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Midnight's Children
“I have been only the humblest jugglers-with-facts; and that, in a country where the truth is what it is instructed to be, reality quite literally ceases to exist, so that everything becomes possible except what we are told is the case; and maybe this was the difference between my Indian childhood and Pakistani adolescence--that in the first I was beset by an infinity of alternative realities, while in the second I was adrift, disoriented, amid an equally infinite number of falsenesses, unrealities and lies.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Midnight's Children
Salman Rushdie
Born place: in Bombay, India
Born date June 19, 1947
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“Miriam will never know what kind of dog attacked her, will imagine a Doberman or a German shepherd with snarling, angry teeth despite the fact she bears neither bite marks nor broken skin. It will never cross her mind that the dog was a beagle and that she was knocked over from a surprise more than force. The children of the house she fled will use the incident to convince their parents to keep the dog, which had been on the verge of being given away for its propensity to shit at the slightest hint of thunder it having been sequestered in the garage that night because of a stormy forecast. The family will never know what manner of burglar their fog deflected, will imagine a scruffy, heavy-set man with scars and a limp groping the family jewelery. It will never cross their minds that their intruder was am upper middle-class wife and mother of two who would have had eyes only for their Chinese teakettle. ”
― Myla Goldberg, quote from Bee Season
“They've arrested Sebastian! For m-murder! You've g-got to stop them! He d-didn't do it! He can't have done it! He doesn't believe in murder! He's a v-vegetarian!”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Big Boned
“El Señor nos lo ha dado, el Señor nos lo ha quitado”
― V.C. Andrews, quote from Garden of Shadows
“It was strange, to find a woman who could make him happy just with her mere presence. He didn’t even have to see her, or hear her voice, or even smell her scent. He just had to know that she was there.”
― Julia Quinn, quote from An Offer From a Gentleman
“Glitter and streamers of light swirled around
us, and a chorus of tiny voices sang out a single note. I
winced, knowing there was only one person who thought a
normal entrance, like walking through a door, wasn’t good
enough for her; she had to announce her presence with
sparkle and glitter and St. Peter’s choir.”
― Julie Kagawa, quote from Summer's Crossing
True Believer
Angel
This Man Confessed
Eye of the Needle
Written on the Body
First Grave on the R...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
