'The Satanic Verses' was denied the ordinary life of a novel. It became something smaller and uglier: an insult.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on how 'The Satanic Verses' was not just another novel, but became a source of controversy and offense.
'The Satanic Verses' by Salman Rushdie is an example of how literature can be transformed from a work of art into a battleground for ideological conflict. Instead of being appreciated for its narrative and themes, it became a focal point of outrage, reducing its literary merit to an insult in the eyes of some, highlighting the complexities and consequences of artistic expression in a polarized world.
In practice
During a discussion on censorship in literature, this quote could illustrate the consequences of controversial works.
I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a bad rap from history, and that he was actually a person quite unlike what we now think of as Machiavellian. He was a republican. He disliked totalitarian government.
Killing people because you don't like their ideas - it's a bad thing.
faith without doubt is addiction
I am clearly vulnerable to these more passionate and volatile unstable relationships. I am trying to not be so vulnerable.
In India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of 'respect.' What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name?
Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.
For me, architecture is the means, not the end. It's a means of making different life forms possible.
I have always liked drawing, when you draw you see things more intensely.
Art is what we call...the thing an artist does. It's not the medium or the oil or the price or whether it hangs on a wall or you eat it. What matters, what makes it art, is that the person who made it overcame the resistance, ignored the voice of doubt and made something worth making. Something risky. Something human. Art is not in the ...eye of the beholder. It's in the soul of the artist.
I am just getting into Zora Neale Hurston, who is possibly a much better writer than the critics and rivals who tried to erase her from history, resulting in a life in which she worked as a maid and died in a welfare nursing home. She's clever. She does something modern to the sentence.
There is always a subjective aspect in landscape art, something in the picture that tells us as much about who is behind the camera as about what is in front of it.
I'll tell you something, and this is true: I've never been able to write a film which I didn't respect. I just can't do it. I'm very happy about all the films I haven't done.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.