Salman Rushdie citáty

Sir Salman Rushdie [rušdi] je indicko-britský spisovatel. Proslavil se svým druhým románem Děti půlnoci , který v roce 1981 získal Bookerovu cenu. Velká část jeho rané prózy se odehrává na indickém subkontinentu. Rushdieho styl psaní bývá často označován jako magický realismus s historickou fikcí a mezi hlavní témata jeho díla patří propojení, rozkoly a přesuny mezi východním a západním světem. V letech 1993 a 2001 navštívil Prahu.

V červnu 2007 byl Rushdiemu udělen rytířský titul za zásluhy o literaturu, dále je nositelem řádu Commandeur francouzského Řádu umění a literatury. V roce 2007 zahájil pětileté působení jakožto hostující spisovatel na americké Emory University a v květnu 2008 byl zvolen do Americké akademie umění a literatury. Wikipedia  

✵ 19. červen 1947
Salman Rushdie foto

Díla

Děti půlnoci
Salman Rushdie
Joseph Anton: A Memoir
Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie: 131   citátů 9   lajků

Salman Rushdie nejznámější citáty

„Na Cambridgi jsem se naučil chvályhodnou metodu diskuse: Nikdy si neberete nic osobně, ale nemáte absolutně žádný respekt k názorům lidí. Nikdy nejste hrubí k osobě, ale můžete být neobyčejně hrubí k tomu, co si ta osoba myslí. To mi přijde jako klíčový rozdíl: Lidi musíme chránit před diskriminací na základě jejich rasy, ale nemůžete ohrazovat, ochraňovat jejich ideje. V okamžiku, kdy řeknete, že jakákoli soustava idejí je svatá, ať už je to náboženství nebo světská ideologie, v okamžiku, kdy prohlásíte množinu idejí za imunní vůči kritice, satiře, výsměchu nebo opovržení, svoboda myšlení se stává nemožnou.“

Originál: At Cambridge I was taught a laudable method of argument: You never personalize, but you have absolutely no respect for people’s opinions. You are never rude to the person, but you can be savagely rude about what the person thinks. That seems to me a crucial distinction: People must be protected from discrimination by virtue of their race, but you cannot ring-fence their ideas. The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it’s a belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.
Zdroj: https://web.archive.org/web/20230326194723/https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-feb-07-oe-rushdie7-story.html

„Zaměstnáním básníka je pojmenovat nepojmenovatelné, poukázat na podvody, přidat se na něčí stranu, začít debaty, utvářet svět a zabránit mu, aby usnul.“

Zdroj: [Zdravé rouhání: Nonkonformistické diskursy v Rushdiem a Bulgakovovi, literarni.cz, 2011-05-21, 2011-03-03, http://www.literarni.cz/rubriky/aktualni/clanky/zdrave-rouhani-nonkonformisticke-diskursy-v-rushdiem-a-bulgakovovi_7942.html]

„Už mám dost toho, že své přátele a kamarády nacházím ve sloupcích nekrologů. Mohli by všichni, prosím, chvilku zůstat naživu?“

Zdroj: [Výroky světových politiků a osobností k úmrtí Václava Havla, ceskenoviny.cz, 2011-12-18, 2011-12-21, http://www.ceskenoviny.cz/zpravy/vyroky-svetovych-politiku-a-osobnosti-k-umrti-vaclava-havla/730328&id_seznam=]

„Potřeboval jsem půlku života, na to abych si uvědomil, že apologia pro vita sua velkého Oza se stejně tak hodí na mého otce - že i on byl dobrý člověk, ale špatný čaroděj.“

Zdroj: [Toteberg, Michael, 2005, Lexikon světového filmu, Orpheus, Praha-Litvínov, 83, 80-903310-7-6]
o filmu Čaroděj ze země Oz

Salman Rushdie: Citáty anglicky

“Too many people had spent too long demonizing or totemizing me to listen seriously to what I had to say.”

Address at Columbia University (1991)
Kontext: Too many people had spent too long demonizing or totemizing me to listen seriously to what I had to say. In the West, some "friends" turned against me, calling me by yet another set of insulting names. Now I was spineless, pathetic, debased; I had betrayed myself, my Cause; above all, I had betrayed them.
I also found myself up against the granite, heartless certainties of Actually Existing Islam, by which I mean the political and priestly power structure that presently dominates and stifles Muslim societies. Actually Existing Islam has failed to create a free society anywhere on Earth, and it wasn't about to let me, of all people, argue in favor of one.

“A photograph is a moral decision taken in one eighth of a second.”

Salman Rushdie The Ground Beneath Her Feet

Zdroj: The Ground Beneath Her Feet

“What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.”

As quoted in "The right to be downright offensive" by Jonathan Duffy in BBC News Magazine (21 December 2004) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4114497.stm

“From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.”

Salman Rushdie kniha The Satanic Verses

Zdroj: The Satanic Verses

“There is a point beyond which conciliation looks like capitulation. I do not believe I passed that point, but others have thought otherwise.”

Address at Columbia University (1991)
Kontext: Ibn Rushd's ideas were silenced in their time. And throughout the Muslim world today, progressive ideas are in retreat. Actually Existing Islam reigns supreme, and just as the recently destroyed "Actually Existing Socialism" of the Soviet terror-state was horrifically unlike the utopia of peace and equality of which democratic socialists have dreamed, so also is Actually Existing Islam a force to which I have never given in, to which I cannot submit.
There is a point beyond which conciliation looks like capitulation. I do not believe I passed that point, but others have thought otherwise.

“The Satanic Verses is for change-by-fusion, change-by-conjoining. It is a love song to our mongrel selves.”

Salman Rushdie kniha Imaginary Homelands

Imaginary Homelands (1992)
Kontext: Those who oppose the novel most vociferously today are of the opinion that intermingling with a different culture will inevitably weaken and ruin their own. I am of the opposite opinion. The Satanic Verses celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs. It rejoices in mongrelization and fears the absolutism of the Pure. Melange, hotchpotch, a bit of this and a bit of that is how newness enters the world. It is the great possibility that mass migration gives the world… The Satanic Verses is for change-by-fusion, change-by-conjoining. It is a love song to our mongrel selves.

“It’s fun to read things when you don't know all the words. Even children love it.”

Salon interview (1996)
Kontext: It’s fun to read things when you don't know all the words. Even children love it. One of the things any great children’s writer will tell you is that children like it if in books designed for their age group there is a vocabulary just slightly bigger than theirs. So they come up against weird words, and the weird words excite them. If you describe a small girl in a story as “loquacious,” it works so much better than “talkative.” And then some little girl will read the book and her sister will be shooting her mouth off and she will say to her sister, “Don't be so loquacious.” It is a whole new weapon in her arsenal.

“And if that plunges me into contradiction and paradox, so be it; I've lived in that messy ocean all my life. I've fished in it for my art.”

Address at Columbia University (1991)
Kontext: "Our lives teach us who we are." I have learned the hard way that when you permit anyone else's description of reality to supplant your own — and such descriptions have been raining down on me, from security advisers, governments, journalists, Archbishops, friends, enemies, mullahs — then you might as well be dead. Obviously, a rigid, blinkered, absolutist world view is the easiest to keep hold of, whereas the fluid, uncertain, metamorphic picture I've always carried about is rather more vulnerable. Yet I must cling with all my might to … my own soul; must hold on to its mischievous, iconoclastic, out-of-step clown-instincts, no matter how great the storm. And if that plunges me into contradiction and paradox, so be it; I've lived in that messy ocean all my life. I've fished in it for my art. This turbulent sea was the sea outside my bedroom window in Bombay. It is the sea by which I was born, and which I carry within me wherever I go.
"Free speech is a non-starter," says one of my Islamic extremist opponents. No, sir, it is not. Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.

“Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.”

Address at Columbia University (1991)
Kontext: "Our lives teach us who we are." I have learned the hard way that when you permit anyone else's description of reality to supplant your own — and such descriptions have been raining down on me, from security advisers, governments, journalists, Archbishops, friends, enemies, mullahs — then you might as well be dead. Obviously, a rigid, blinkered, absolutist world view is the easiest to keep hold of, whereas the fluid, uncertain, metamorphic picture I've always carried about is rather more vulnerable. Yet I must cling with all my might to … my own soul; must hold on to its mischievous, iconoclastic, out-of-step clown-instincts, no matter how great the storm. And if that plunges me into contradiction and paradox, so be it; I've lived in that messy ocean all my life. I've fished in it for my art. This turbulent sea was the sea outside my bedroom window in Bombay. It is the sea by which I was born, and which I carry within me wherever I go.
"Free speech is a non-starter," says one of my Islamic extremist opponents. No, sir, it is not. Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.

“So they come up against weird words, and the weird words excite them.”

Salon interview (1996)
Kontext: It’s fun to read things when you don't know all the words. Even children love it. One of the things any great children’s writer will tell you is that children like it if in books designed for their age group there is a vocabulary just slightly bigger than theirs. So they come up against weird words, and the weird words excite them. If you describe a small girl in a story as “loquacious,” it works so much better than “talkative.” And then some little girl will read the book and her sister will be shooting her mouth off and she will say to her sister, “Don't be so loquacious.” It is a whole new weapon in her arsenal.

“I know that many people do care, and are appalled by the … upside-down logic of the post-fatwa world, in which a … novelist can be accused of having savaged or "mugged" a whole community, becoming its tormentor (instead of its … victim) and the scapegoat for … its discontents… . (What minority is smaller and weaker than a minority of one?)”

Address at Columbia University (1991)
Kontext: For many people, I've ceased to be a human being. I've become an issue, a bother, an "affair." … And has it really been so long since religions persecuted people, burning them as heretics, drowning them as witches, that you can't recognize religious persecution when you see it? … What is my single life worth? Despair whispers in my ear: "Not a lot." But I refuse to give in to despair … because … I know that many people do care, and are appalled by the … upside-down logic of the post-fatwa world, in which a … novelist can be accused of having savaged or "mugged" a whole community, becoming its tormentor (instead of its … victim) and the scapegoat for … its discontents…. (What minority is smaller and weaker than a minority of one?)

“Ibn Rushd's ideas were silenced in their time.”

Address at Columbia University (1991)
Kontext: Ibn Rushd's ideas were silenced in their time. And throughout the Muslim world today, progressive ideas are in retreat. Actually Existing Islam reigns supreme, and just as the recently destroyed "Actually Existing Socialism" of the Soviet terror-state was horrifically unlike the utopia of peace and equality of which democratic socialists have dreamed, so also is Actually Existing Islam a force to which I have never given in, to which I cannot submit.
There is a point beyond which conciliation looks like capitulation. I do not believe I passed that point, but others have thought otherwise.

“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.”

Salman Rushdie kniha Děti půlnoci

Midnight's Children (1981)
Kontext: 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.

“It's the very playful, very natural result of juggling languages. You are always reaching for the most appropriate phrase.”

Salon interview (1996)
Kontext: When I was growing up, everyone around me was fond of fooling around with words. It was certainly common in my family, but I think it is typical of Bombay, and maybe of India, that there is a sense of play in the way people use language. Most people in India are multilingual, and if you listen to the urban speech patterns there you'll find it's quite characteristic that a sentence will begin in one language, go through a second language and end in a third. It's the very playful, very natural result of juggling languages. You are always reaching for the most appropriate phrase.

“When I was growing up, everyone around me was fond of fooling around with words.”

Salon interview (1996)
Kontext: When I was growing up, everyone around me was fond of fooling around with words. It was certainly common in my family, but I think it is typical of Bombay, and maybe of India, that there is a sense of play in the way people use language. Most people in India are multilingual, and if you listen to the urban speech patterns there you'll find it's quite characteristic that a sentence will begin in one language, go through a second language and end in a third. It's the very playful, very natural result of juggling languages. You are always reaching for the most appropriate phrase.

“Islam doesn't have to mean blind faith. It can mean what it always meant in your family, a culture, a civilization, as open-minded as your grandfather was, as delightedly disputatious as your father was. … Don't let the zealots make Muslim a terrifying word, I urged myself; remember when it meant family”

Address at Columbia University (1991)
Kontext: I determined to make my peace with Islam, even at the cost of my pride. Those who were surprised and displeased by what I did perhaps failed to see that … I wanted to make peace between the warring halves of the world, which were also the warring halves of my soul….
The really important conversations I had in this period were with myself.
I said: Salman, you must send a message loud enough to … make ordinary Muslims see that you aren't their enemy, and you must make the West understand a little more of the complexity of Muslim culture …, and start thinking a little less stereotypically…. And I said to myself: Admit it, Salman, the Story of Islam has a deeper meaning for you than any of the other grand narratives. Of course you're no mystic, mister…. No supernaturalism, no literalist orthodoxies … for you. But Islam doesn't have to mean blind faith. It can mean what it always meant in your family, a culture, a civilization, as open-minded as your grandfather was, as delightedly disputatious as your father was. … Don't let the zealots make Muslim a terrifying word, I urged myself; remember when it meant family. …
I reminded myself that I had always argued that it was necessary to develop the nascent concept of the "secular Muslim," who, like the secular Jew, affirmed his membership of the culture while being separate from the theology…. But, Salman, I told myself, you can't argue from outside the debating chamber. You've got to cross the threshold, go inside the room, and then fight for your humanized, historicized, secularized way of being a Muslim.

“Obviously, a rigid, blinkered, absolutist world view is the easiest to keep hold of, whereas the fluid, uncertain, metamorphic picture I've always carried about is rather more vulnerable.”

Address at Columbia University (1991)
Kontext: "Our lives teach us who we are." I have learned the hard way that when you permit anyone else's description of reality to supplant your own — and such descriptions have been raining down on me, from security advisers, governments, journalists, Archbishops, friends, enemies, mullahs — then you might as well be dead. Obviously, a rigid, blinkered, absolutist world view is the easiest to keep hold of, whereas the fluid, uncertain, metamorphic picture I've always carried about is rather more vulnerable. Yet I must cling with all my might to … my own soul; must hold on to its mischievous, iconoclastic, out-of-step clown-instincts, no matter how great the storm. And if that plunges me into contradiction and paradox, so be it; I've lived in that messy ocean all my life. I've fished in it for my art. This turbulent sea was the sea outside my bedroom window in Bombay. It is the sea by which I was born, and which I carry within me wherever I go.
"Free speech is a non-starter," says one of my Islamic extremist opponents. No, sir, it is not. Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.

“For many people, I've ceased to be a human being. I've become an issue, a bother, an "affair." … And has it really been so long since religions persecuted people, burning them as heretics, drowning them as witches, that you can't recognize religious persecution when you see it?”

Address at Columbia University (1991)
Kontext: For many people, I've ceased to be a human being. I've become an issue, a bother, an "affair." … And has it really been so long since religions persecuted people, burning them as heretics, drowning them as witches, that you can't recognize religious persecution when you see it? … What is my single life worth? Despair whispers in my ear: "Not a lot." But I refuse to give in to despair … because … I know that many people do care, and are appalled by the … upside-down logic of the post-fatwa world, in which a … novelist can be accused of having savaged or "mugged" a whole community, becoming its tormentor (instead of its … victim) and the scapegoat for … its discontents…. (What minority is smaller and weaker than a minority of one?)

“I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you'll have to swallow a world.”

Salman Rushdie kniha Děti půlnoci

Midnight's Children (1981)
Kontext: 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.

“Nothing really improves us. Whatever improves one person will disimprove another.”

Salon interview (1996)
Kontext: Nothing really improves us. Whatever improves one person will disimprove another. Some people are paralyzed by the consciousness of death, other people live with it. … The fatwa certainly made me think about it a lot more than I ever had. I guess I know I'm going to die, but then, so are you. And one of the things that I thought a lot about at the time of the fatwa and ever since is that quite a few of the people I really care about died during this period, all about the same age as I am, and they were not under a death sentence. They just died, of lung cancer, AIDS, whatever. It occurred to me that you don't need a fatwa, it can happen anytime.

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