"The Satanic Verses" Quotes

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.

The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas—uncertainty, progress, change—into crimes.

Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.

The only people who see the whole picture are the ones who step out of the frame.

Human beings move and breathe in the stories they tell themselves.

But what can a man do when he does not know who he is? When he cannot see into himself and understand what he is capable of?

The world is not to be put in order. The world is order. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.

To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world.

The satanic verses are not a concession to paganism, but a recognition of the way in which human beings are actually obliged to live.

The Satanic Verses are not a concession to paganism, but a recognition of the way in which human beings are actually obliged to live.