Salman RushdieThinkers

Anton Chekhov is this poet of melancholy and isolation and of wishing you were somewhere else than where you are.

Art's function is to challenge accepted reality, especially when that reality is created by powerful interest groups.

The Artist's time-honored roll is to speak truth to power.

The Book is a version of the world.

A Child is the vessel into which adults pour their poison.

Cruelty is not a literary value.

Democracy is that at whose heart is argument.

Exile is a dream of a glorious return, a vision of revolution, an endless paradox: looking forward by always looking back, a ball hurled high into the air.

Faith is an addiction when it comes without doubt.

A Free society is a society in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction.