“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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“So, how we doin'?"
"Same as usual: dead people, a mystery, more dead people."
"Who we lost?"
"The boy. His guardians. Maybe Elliot Norton."
"Shit, don't sound like we got anybody left. Anyone hires you better leave you your fee in their will.”
― John Connolly, quote from The White Road
“Bird didn’t move.
Shari and Greg, running side by side at full speed, reached him together.
“Bird?” Shari knelt down beside him. “Bird?”
Bird opened one eye. “Gotcha,” he said quietly. The weird half-smile formed on his face, and he exploded in high-pitched laughter.
It took Shari and Greg a while to react. They both stood open-mouthed, gaping at their laughing friend.
Then, his heart beginning to slow to normal, Greg reached down, grabbed Bird with both hands, and pulled him roughly to his feet.
“I’ll hold him while you hit him,” Greg offered, holding Bird from behind.”
― R.L. Stine, quote from Say Cheese and Die!
“The level of the Pacific was not twenty feet higher than that of the Atlantic, as had been the accepted view for centuries. Sea level was sea level, the same on both sides. The difference was in the size of their tides. (The tides on the Pacific are tremendous, eighteen to twenty feet, while on the Caribbean there is little or no tide, barely more than a foot. When Balboa stood at last on the Pacific shore, he had seen no rush of lordly breakers, but an ugly brown mud flat reaching away for a mile and more, because he had arrived when the tide was out.)”
― David McCullough, quote from The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914
“What’s about to happen?” I know the answer, but I’m playing with our fire. I want to hear it from his lips.
His eyes widen, but he smiles, figuring out my game. “I’m taking you to my house, and I’m putting you to bed.” His grin gets a little wider before he finishes, “With me in you.”
― Nicole Reed, quote from Ruining You
“Jelly beans! Millions and billions of purples and yellows and greens and licorice and grape and raspberry and mint and round and smooth and crunchy outside and soft-mealy inside and sugary and bouncing jouncing tumbling clittering clattering skittering fell on the heads and shoulders and hardhats and carapaces of the Timkin works, tinkling on the slidewalk and bouncing away and rolling about underfoot and filling the sky on their way down with all the colors of joy and childhood and holidays, coming down in a steady rain, a solid wash, a torrent of color and sweetness out of the sky from above, and entering a universe of sanity and metronomic order with quite-mad coocoo newness. Jelly beans!”
― Harlan Ellison, quote from "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman
American Sniper: The...
The Book of Life
Danse Macabre
Frostbitten
Boundless
The Shadow of the To...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.
