Memoirists

"Think not that I have come in quest of common flowers; but rather to bemoan the loss of one whose scent has vanished from the air."

"You that in far-off countries of the sky can dwell secure, look back upon me here; for I am weary of this frail world's decay."

"One ought not to be unkind to a woman merely on account of her plainness, any more than one had a right to take liberties with her merely because she was handsome."

"I have never thought there was much to be said in favor of dragging on long after all one's friends were dead."

"Anything whatsoever may become the subject of a novel, provided only that it happens in this mundane life and not in some fairyland beyond our human ken."

"[The art of the novel] does not simply consist in the author's telling a story about the adventures of some other person. On the contrary, it happens because the storyteller's own experience of men and things, whether for good or ill—not only what he has passed through himself, but even events which he has only witnessed or been told of—has moved him to an emotion so passionate that he can no longer keep it shut up in his heart."

"Does it not move you strangely, the love-bird's cry, tonight when, like the drifting snow, memory piles up on memory?"

"Though the snow-drifts of Yoshino were heaped across his path, doubt not that whither his heart is set, his footsteps shall tread out their way."

"It is in general the unexplored that attracts us."

"Ceaseless as the interminable voices of the bell-cricket, all night till dawn my tears flow."

"Real things in the darkness seem no realer than dreams."

"No art or learning is to be pursued halfheartedly," His Highness replied, "...and any art worth learning will certainly reward more or less generously the effort made to study it."

"I have finally realized how rarely you will find a flawless woman, one who is simply perfect. No doubt there are many who seem quite promising, write a flowing hand, give you back a perfectly acceptable poem, and all in all do credit enough to the rank they have to uphold, but you know, if you insist on any particular quality, you seldom find one who will do. Each one is all too pleased with her own accomplishments, runs others down, and so on. While a girl is under the eye of her adoring parents and living a sheltered life bright with future promise, it seems men have only to hear of some little talent of hers to be attracted. As long as she is pretty and innocent, and young enough to have nothing else on her mind, she may well put her heart into learning a pastime that she has seen others enjoy, and in fact she may become quite good at it. And when those who know her disguise her weaknesses and advertise whatever passable qualities she may have so as to present them in the best light, how could anyone think ill of her, having no reason to suspect her of being other than she seems? But when you look further to see whether it is all true, I am sure you can only end up disappointed."

"Mono no aware."

"Unforgettably horrible is the naked body. It really does not have the slightest charm."

"Sei Shōnagon is a smug and horrible person. She acts so smart and is always writing in true [Chinese] characters, but if you look closely, you can find lots of mistakes. People who try that hard to be different from everyone else always end up falling behind, with trouble waiting in their future; and people who are that affected act all mono no aware and attend all the interesting events even when they're lonely and bored, so that in the end the affectation stops being an act. How exactly are things going to end well for a person like that?"

"It is useless to talk with those who do not understand one and troublesome to talk with those who criticize from a feeling of superiority. Especially one-sided persons are troublesome. Few are accomplished in many arts and most cling narrowly to their own opinion."

"When my brother...was a young boy learning the Chinese classics, I was in the habit of listening with him and I became unusually proficient at understanding those passages that he found too difficult to grasp and memorize. Father, a most learned man, was always regretting the fact: "Just my luck!" he would say. "What a pity she was not born a man!" But then I gradually realized that people were saying "It's bad enough when a man flaunts his Chinese learning; she will come to no good," and since then I have avoided writing the simplest [Chinese] character. My handwriting is appalling."

"To be pleasant, gentle, calm and self-possessed: this is the basis of good taste and charm in a woman. No matter how amorous or passionate you may be, as long as you are straightforward and refrain from causing others embarrassment, no one will mind. But women who are too vain and act pretentiously, to the extent that they make others feel uncomfortable, will themselves become the object of attention; and once that happens, people will find fault with whatever they say or do: whether it be how they enter a room, how they sit down, how they stand up or how they take their leave. Those who end up contradicting themselves and those who disparage their companions are also carefully watched and listened to all the more. As long as you are free from such faults, people will surely refrain from listening to tittle-tattle and will want to show you sympathy, if only for the sake of politeness. I am of the opinion that when you intentionally cause hurt to another, or indeed if you do ill through mere thoughtless behavior, you fully deserve to be censured in public. Some people are so good-natured that they can still care for those who despise them, but I myself find it very difficult. Did the Buddha himself in all his compassion ever preach that one should simply ignore those who slander the Three Treasures? How in this sullied world of ours can those who are hard done by be expected to reciprocate in kind?"

"So all they see of me is a façade. There are times when I am forced to sit with them and on such occasions I simply ignore their petty criticisms, not because I am particularly shy but because I consider it pointless. As a result, they now look upon me as a dullard. "Well, we never expected this!" they all say. "No one liked her. They all said she was pretentious, awkward, difficult to approach, prickly, too fond of her tales, haughty, prone to versifying, disdainful, cantankerous and scornful; but when you meet her, she is strangely meek, a completely different person altogether!" How embarrassing! Do they really look upon me as such a dull thing, I wonder? But I am what I am. Her Majesty has also remarked more than once that she had thought I was not the kind of person with whom she could ever relax, but that I have now become closer to her than any of the others. I am so perverse and standoffish. If only I can avoid putting off those for whom I have a genuine regard."

"Seeing the water birds on the lake increase in number day by day, I thought to myself how nice it would be if it snowed before we got back to the Palace—the garden would look so beautiful; and then, two days later, while I was away on a short visit, lo and behold, it did snow. As I watched the rather drab scene at home, I felt both depressed and confused. For some years now I had existed from day to day in listless fashion, taking note of the flowers, the birds in song, the way the skies change from season to season, the moon, the frost and snow, doing little more than registering the passage of time. How would it all turn out? The thought of my continuing loneliness was unbearable, and yet I had managed to exchange sympathetic letters with those of like mind—some contacted via fairly tenuous connections—who would discuss my trifling tales and other matters with me; but I was merely amusing myself with fictions, finding solace for my idleness in foolish words. Aware of my own insignificance, I had at least managed for the time being to avoid anything that might have been considered shameful or unbecoming; yet here I was, tasting the bitterness of life to the very full."

"Nowadays, however, a powerful tribe of clerics has taken over Islam. These are the contemporary Thought Police. They have turned Muhammad into a perfect being, his life into a perfect life, his revelation into the unambiguous, clear event it originally was not. Powerful taboos have been erected. One may not discuss Muhammad as if he were human, with human virtues and weaknesses. One may not discuss the growth of Islam as a historical phenomenon, as an ideology born out of its time. These are the taboos against which The Satanic Verses has transgressed (these and one other; I also tried to write about the place of women in Islamic society, and in the Koran). It is for this breach of taboo that the novel is being anathematized, fulminated against, and set alight."

"Almost all Muslims, including the most enlightened, feel offended by Rushdie's novel or, rather, by reports they have read or heard about it. Very few people have actually read the dense and tortuous book, but they do not have to. The very idea of using the prophet Muhammad as a character in a novel is painful to many Muslims. The entire Islamic system consists of the so-called Hodud, or limits beyond which one should simply not venture. Islam does not recognize unlimited freedom of expression. Call them taboos, if you like, but Islam considers a wide variety of topics as permanently closed. Most Muslims are prepared to be broad-minded about most things but never anything that even remotely touches their faith... To Muslims religion is not just a part of life. It is, in fact, life that is a part of religion. Muslims cannot understand a concept that has no rules, no limits. The Western belief in human rights, which seems to lack limits, is alien to Islamic traditions... The fact that Rushdie propagated his heresy in a book is of especial significance to Muslims. Islam is the religion of the book par excellence. Few cultures hold the written and printed word in so much awe as Muslims, even though the vast majority are illiterate. When a Muslim wants to clinch an argument he says, 'It is written.'"

"I never called for the death of Salman Rushdie; nor backed the Fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini — and still don't. The book itself destroyed the harmony between peoples and created an unnecessary international crisis. When asked about my opinion regarding blasphemy, I could not tell a lie and confirmed that — like both the Torah and the Gospel — the Qur'an considers it, without repentance, as a capital offense. The Bible is full of similar harsh laws if you're looking for them. However, the application of such Biblical and Qur'anic injunctions is not to be outside of due process of law, in a place or land where such law is accepted and applied by the society as a whole."

"In Islam there is a line between let's say freedom and the line which is then transgressed into immorality and irresponsibility and I think as far as this writer is concerned, unfortunately, he has been irresponsible with his freedom of speech. Salman Rushdie or indeed any writer who abuses the prophet, or indeed any prophet, under Islamic law, the sentence for that is actually death. It's got to be seen as a deterrent, so that other people should not commit the same mistake again."

"I think when you are Salman Rushdie, you must get bored with people who always want to talk to you about literature."

"I asked him, "How did you manage to keep on writing when writing demands self-abandonment, when you’re being hunted, you're being persecuted?” He said, "You should tell them, 'Fuck you.'" And I said, "Did you know how to say 'fuck you' before it all occurred?" And he said, "No, I didn't know." So I said, "This turmoil taught you to detach and to be able to say 'fuck you' and keep on writing?" And he said, "Yes, this is what you have to learn from this experience.""

"To the Editors: As writers and scholars from the Islamic world we are appalled by the vilification, bookbanning and threats of physical violence against Salman Rushdie, the gifted author of Midnight's Children, Shame, and The Satanic Verses. This campaign is done in the name of Islam, although none of it does Islam any credit. Certainly Muslims and others are entitled to protest against The Satanic Verses if they feel the novel offends their religion and cultural sensibilities. But to carry protest and debate over into the realm of bigoted violence is in fact antithetical to Islamic traditions of learning and tolerance. We deplore and regret this sort of thing, and we reaffirm our belief in universal principles of rational discussion and freedom of expression."

"I admire Salman Rushdie enormously. Before Midnight's Children, writers of Indian origin writing in English were encouraged by convention to write of their world with detachment and irony. Their method was reductive. They treated their characters as though they were uncomplicated. With Midnight's Children, Rushdie breaks down those conventions. He aggrandizes, and that's marvellously healthy. The sections on Bombay have a superb excess of energy. Many of the writers before him tried, very unfortunately, to "tame" India for foreign readers. The other interesting thing about Salman Rushdie is that he discards British models. His fiction is closer to that of Günter Grass and Márquez than to Forster."

"I would like to inform all the intrepid Muslims in the world... that the author of the book titled The Satanic Verses, which has been compiled, printed, and published in opposition to Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran, as well as those publishers who were aware of its contents, have been declared madhur el dam [“those whose blood must be shed”]. I call on all zealous Muslims to execute them quickly, wherever they find them, so that no one will dare to insult Islam again... ."

"Salman Rushdie, the author of the book Satanic Verses, must be executed on the basis of the religious fatwa by His Eminence Imam Khomeini. He has no escape from this fatwa."

"[Published six-months after the near-fatal stabbing of Rushdie in August 2022] As it happens, he had cause to worry. In the intervening years, support for Rushdie and for free expression has narrowed ... An August 19 New York City rally of writers gathered in support of Rushdie reprised a 1989 demonstration against the fatwa in which Susan Sontag, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, Christopher Hitchens, and others participated, but the later iteration "paled in comparison," a Le Monde editorial remarked. Across social media, writers expressed concern for Rushdie's health, but an instinctual solidarity with him and the sense—so strong at the time of the fatwa—that his fate spoke to all of us as members of a liberal society did not materialize. Even among his defenders, free speech took a back seat. Why? One reason is fear. In 2009, the British writer Hanif Kureishi told Prospect Magazine that "nobody would have the balls today to write The Satanic Verses." He might have added that no one would have the balls to defend it. Most writers, Kureishi continued, live quietly, and "they don’t want a bomb in the letterbox.""

"In the face of this ukase, which amounts to a life sentence as well as a death sentence on a reflective, autonomous individual, no wonder that people change the subject and take refuge in precedent or analogy. It's natural to do so when faced with a challenge that is so alarmingly singular. Yes, there are other death squads and assassins and proscriptions and archipelagos and all the rest of it. Yes, there are existing campaigns devoted to the release of so-and-so and the freedom of this-and-that. But when last did a head of government claim to be soliciting the murder of a citizen of another country, for pay, for the offence of literary production? I have heard great argument about it and about, from reminiscences of the Trotsky assassination to Christopher Hill's recall of the Papal incitement against Gloriana, but evermore came out by the same door as in I went. The Salman Rushdie case has no analogue and no precedent."

"'I never thought of myself as a writer about religion until religion came after me', Salman Rushdie says. 'Religion was part of my subject, of course... nevertheless... I had to confront what was confronting me and to decide what I wanted to stand up for in the face of what so vociferously, repressively and violently stood against me. At that time it was difficult to persuade people that the attack on The Satanic Verses was part of a broader global assault on writers, artists, and fundamental freedoms.""

"When Salman Rushdie published Midnight's Children [1981], it seemed to set tongues free in India in an odd way. Suddenly, younger writers realized that they didn't need to write correct and perfect English in the English tradition, but they could use Indian English and use it for any purpose whatsoever - for writing comic books, satiric books, or even for writing serious books."

"Rushdie shows us with what fantasy our sort of history must now be written — if, that is, we are to penetrate it, and perhaps even save it."

"If a blasphemer [Rushdie] can be given the title "Sir" by the West despite the fact he has hurt the feelings of Muslims, then a mujahid [Osama bin Laden] who has been fighting for Islam against the Russians, Americans and British must be given the lofty title of Islam, Saifullah."

"[Y]ou will find elements of magic realism in literature from all over the world—not just in Latin America. You will find it in Scandinavian sagas, in African poetry, in Indian literature written in English, in American literature written by ethnic minorities. Writers like Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison, Barbara Kingsolver, and Alice Hoffman all use this style."

"Art is not a luxury. It stands at the essence of our humanity, and it asks for no special protection except the right to exist. It accepts argument, criticism, even rejection. It does not accept violence. And in the end, it outlasts those who oppress it. The poet Ovid was exiled by Augustus Caesar, but the poetry of Ovid has outlasted the Roman Empire. The poet Mandelstam's life was ruined by Joseph Stalin, but his poetry has outlasted the Soviet Union. The poet Lorca was murdered by the thugs of General Franco, but his art has outlasted the fascism of the Falange."

"Just wondering if the Royal Society of Literature is "impartial" about attempted murder, @BernardineEvari? (Asking for a friend.)"

"I've got nothing else to do. I would like to have a second skill, but I don't. I always envied writers like Günter Grass, who had a second career as a visual artist. I thought how nice it must be to spend a day wrestling with words, and then get up and walk down the street to your art studio and become something completely else. I don't have that. So, all I can do is this. As long as there's a story that I think is worth giving my time to, then I will. When I have a book in my head, it's as if the rest of the world is in its correct shape."

"I'm going to tell you really truthfully, I'm not thinking about the long term [...] I'm thinking about little step by little step. I just think, Bop till you drop."

"[Rushdie was stabbed in August 2022, leading to life-changing injuries, by an admirer of Ayatollah Khomeini. His novel, Victory City, was about to be published.] I'm hoping that to some degree it might change the subject. I've always thought that my books are more interesting than my life [...] Unfortunately, the world appears to disagree."

"[Since the fatwa of 1989, and not allowing it to affect his writings.] There was a moment when there was a 'me' floating around that had been invented to show what a bad person I was [...] "Evil." "Arrogant." "Terrible writer." "Nobody would've read him if there hadn't been an attack against his book." Et cetera. I've had to fight back against that false self. My mother used to say that her way of dealing with unhappiness was to forget it. She said, "Some people have a memory. I have a forget-ory."... If somebody arrives from another planet who has never heard of anything that happened to me, and just has the books on the shelf and reads them chronologically, I don't think that alien would think, Something terrible happened to this writer in 1989. The books go on their own journey. And that was really an act of will."

"[On meeting E.M. Forster on several occasions while an undergraduate at King's College, Cambridge] He was very encouraging when he heard that I wanted to be a writer [...] And he said something which I treasured, which is that he felt that the great novel of India would be written by somebody from India with a Western education. I hugely admire A Passage to India, because it was an anti-colonial book at a time when it was not at all fashionable to be anti-colonial [...] What I kind of rebelled against was Forsterian English, which is very cool and meticulous. I thought, If there's one thing that India is not, it's not cool. It's hot and noisy and crowded and excessive. How do you find a language that's like that?"

"I'll tell you quite truthfully that the great wound in my life [from then] is India, because of the way I and my work have been treated there"

"[Is there more support for censorship now?] I don't know if there's more of it, but it's certainly more obvious. There's a youthful progressive movement, much of which is extremely valuable, but there does seem to be within it an acceptance that certain ideas should be suppressed, and I just think that's worrying. Wherever there has been censorship, the first people to suffer from it are underprivileged minorities. So if in the name of underprivileged minorities you wish to endorse a suppression of wrongthink, it's a slippery slope."

"I grew up in a very female world with three younger sisters, so I was always comfortable around women, which was one of the reasons I hated my boarding school [Rugby], because there were no girls or women there. I think a lot of men are scared of women, and if the women are competent, brilliant or self-assured, they become even scarier. But to me, that's enormously attractive. I can't dream of having as a friend, or anything else in my life, a woman who is not those things."

"One of the benefits of being a writer, I think, is that if what you're doing for a living is examining your life, hopefully by the time you reach this advanced age, you understand something about yourself and why you think what you think. Of course, other writers go in different directions."

"I'm not a geopolitical entity. I'm someone writing in a room."