In the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the nonbelongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of celebrating uniqueness and individuality in society.
Salman Rushdie's quote reflects on how cultures and societies often recognize and honor those who deviate from the normβthe 'nonbelongers' and 'freaks'. These individuals often serve as sources of inspiration and creativity, contributing to the richness of myths, arts, and music, thus highlighting the value of diversity in shaping our collective identity and expression.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of diversity in creative fields.
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.
Black writers, of whatever quality, who step outside the pale of what black writers are supposed to write about, or who black writers are supposed to be, are condemned to silences in black literary circles that are as total and as destructive as any imposed by racism.
There are so few roles out there. And even if it is a film that could be led by a black actress, how many times is that film going to get funded? Let's just be real. But it's not just black people. It's Asians, it's Hispanic people if you're not Salma Hayek. It's hard. It's hard to get films funded.
Erotica is using a feather; pornograpy is using the whole chicken.
Poetry is a process of getting back to the unconscious. Hence, I am always writing-even when I'm not facing the white space. I feel writers are like reservoirs of images. We take in what is around us.
A photographer is part pick-pocket and part tightrope dancer.
Most people read poetry listening for echoes because the echoes are familiar to them. They wade through it the way a boy wades through water, feeling with his toes for the bottom: The echoes are the bottom.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.