It is very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it.
Meaning of the quote
It's simple to avoid being upset by a book. All you need to do is close the book and stop reading it. This quote means that if you find a book offensive or upsetting, you can choose not to continue reading it. You have the power to decide what kind of content you expose yourself to, and closing the book is an easy way to avoid being offended.
About Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie is an acclaimed Indian-born British-American novelist known for blending magic realism with historical fiction. His novel “Midnight’s Children” won the Booker Prize, and his contentious work “The Satanic Verses” led to assassination attempts and a religious fatwa against him. Despite the controversy, Rushdie has received numerous honors for his contributions to literature.
More quotes from Salman Rushdie
One of the extraordinary things about human events is that the unthinkable becomes thinkable.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
Names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like so many of the earth’s marvels, beneath the dust of habit.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
A poet’s work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
It is very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
Rock and roll music – the music of freedom frightens people and unleashes all manner of conservative defense mechanisms.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
Such is the miraculous nature of the future of exiles: what is first uttered in the impotence of an overheated apartment becomes the fate of nations.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
What one writer can make in the solitude of one room is something no power can easily destroy.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
Most of what matters in your life takes place in your absence.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
I used to say, ‘There is a God-shaped hole in me.’ For a long time I stressed the absence, the hole. Now I find it is the shape which has become more important.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
The acceptance that all that is solid has melted into the air, that reality and morality are not givens but imperfect human constructs, is the point from which fiction begins.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
Doubt, it seems to me, is the central condition of a human being in the twentieth century.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
Our lives teach us who we are.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
If Woody Allen were a Muslim, he’d be dead by now.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
Vertigo is the conflict between the fear of falling and the desire to fall.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
I hate admitting that my enemies have a point.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
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.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
I do not need the idea of God to explain the world I live in.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
Our lives are not what we deserve; they are, let us agree, in many ways deficient.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
In this world without quiet corners, there can be no easy escapes from history, from hullabaloo, from terrible, unquiet fuss.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
If I were asked for a one-sentence sound bite on religion, I would say I was against it.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanation, have wrought havoc among mere mixed-up human beings.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)
Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts.
Indian-born British-American novelist (born 1947)