The Moor's Last Sigh Quotes

“A sigh isn't just a sigh. We inhale the world and breathe out meaning. While we can. While we can.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

“We crave permission openly to become our secret selves.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

“How to forgive the world for its beauty, which merely disguises its ugliness; for its gentleness, which merely cloaks its cruelty; for its illusion of continuity, seamlessly, as the night follows the day, so to speak- whereas in reality life is a series of brutal raptures, falling upon your defenseless hands, like the blows of a woodman's axe?”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

“we look up and we hope the stars look down, we pray that there may be stars for us to follow, stars moving across the heavens and leading us to our destiny, but it's only our vanity. We look at the galaxy and fall in love, but the universe cares less about us than we do about it, and the stars stay in their courses however much we may wish upon them to do otherwise. It's true that if you watch the sky-wheel turn for a while you'll see a meteor fall, flame and die. That's not a star worth following; it's just an unlucky rock. Our fates are here on earth. There are no guiding stars.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

“Ignorantly is how we all fall in love; for it is a kind of fall. Closing our eyes, we leap from that cliff in hope of a soft landing. Nor is it always soft; but still, without that leap nobody comes to life.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

“Abraham Zogoiby covered his face that night in August 1939 because he had been assailed by fear, [...] a sudden apprehension that the ugliness of life might defeat its beauty; that love did not make lovers invulnerable. Nevertheless, he thought, even if the world's beauty and love were on the edge of destruction, theirs would still be the only side to be on; defeated love would still be love, hate's victory would not make it other than it was. ”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

“I had become a kind of information magpie, gathering to myself all manner of shiny scraps of fact and hokum and books and art-history and politics and music and film, and developing, too, a certain skill in manipulating and arranging these pitiful shards so that they glittered and caught the light. Fool's gold, or priceless nuggets mined from my singular childhood's rich bohemian seam? I leave it to others to decide.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

“If a birth is the fall-out from the explosion caused by the union of two unstable elements, then perhaps a half-life is all we can expect. ”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

“I'll tell you a secret about fear: it's an absolutist. With fear, it's all or nothing. Either, like any bullying tyrant, it rules your life with stupid blinding omnipotence, or else you overthrow it, and its power vanishes in a puff of smoke. And another secret: the revolution against fear, the engendering of that tawdry despot's fall, has more or less nothing to do with 'courage'. It is driven by something much more straightforward: the simple need to get on with your life.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

“Confusion to our enemies!”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

“I, however, was raised neither as Catholic nor as Jew. I was both, and nothing: a jewholic-anonymous, a cathjew nut, a stewpot, a mongrel cur. I was--what's the word these days?--atomised. Yessir: a real Bombay mix. ”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

“BOMBAY WAS CENTRAL, had been so from the moment of its creation: the bastard child of a Portuguese-English wedding, and yet the most Indian of Indian cities. In Bombay all Indias met and merged. In Bombay, too, all-India met what-was-not-India, what came across the black water to flow into our veins. Everything north of Bombay was North India, everything south of it was the South. To the east lay India’s East and to the west, the world’s West. Bombay was central; all rivers flowed into its human sea. It was an ocean of stories; we were all its narrators, and everybody talked at once.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

“Genius was being born in her, filling the empty spaces in her bed, her heart, her womb. She needed no-one but herself.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

“they came in search of the hot stuff, just like any man calling on a tart.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

“...the true direction of her heart: that is to say, inwards, to the reality of dreams.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

“There is a thing that lives in us, eating our food, breathing our air, looking out through our eyes, and when it comes out to play nobody is immune; possessed, we turn murderously upon one another, thing-darkness in our eyes and real weapons in our hands, neighbour against thing-ridden neighbour, thing-driven cousin against cousin, brother-thing against brother-thing, thing-child against thing-child.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

“We look at the galaxy and fall in love, but the universe cares less about us than we do about it, and the stars stay in their courses however much we may wish upon them to do otherwise. It’s true that if you watch the sky-wheel turn for a while you’ll see a meteor fall, flame and die. That’s not a star worth following; it’s just an unlucky rock. Our fates are here on earth. There are no guiding stars.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

“We, the living, must find what space we can alongside them; the giant dead whom we cannot tie down, though we grasp at their hair, though we rope them while they sleep”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

“Zamanın hızlandırılmış akışı karşısında kendimi yavaşlatmayı amaçlıyordum boşu boşuna.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

“Pepper it was that brought Vasco da Gama's tall ships across the ocean, from Lisbon's Tower of Belem to the Malabar Coast: first to Calicut and later, for its lagoony harbour, to Cochin. English and French sailed in the wake of that first-arrived Portugee, so that in the period called Discovery-of-India — but how could we be discovered when we were not
covered before? — we were 'not so much sub-continent as sub-condiment', as my distinguished mother had it.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

“In spite of all my efforts to create a neat, tidy, obedient, moderate, unexceptional persona, I was simply
too weird for them; until that is, my first female tutor was hired.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

“Yes, I know there is a fashion nowadays for these Hitler's-valet type memoirs, and many people are against, they say we should not humanise the inhuman. But the point is they are not inhuman, these Mainduck-style little Hitlers, and it is in their humanity that we must locate our collective guilt, humanity's guilt for human beings' misdeeds; for if they are just monsters - if it is just a question of King Kong and Godzilla wreaking havoc until the aeroplanes bring them down - then the rest of us are excused.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

“I'll drink some wine, and then, like a latter-day Van Winkle, I'll lay me down upon this graven stone, lay my head beneath these letters RIP, and close my eyes, according to our family's old practice of falling asleep in times of trouble, and hope to awaken, renewed and joyful, into a better time.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

“Yenilgiye uğramış aşk yine de bir hazinedir, aşksızlığı seçenler hiç zafer kazanmamış demektir.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

“Gerçek hemen her zaman istisnai, acayip, beklenmediktir ve neredeyse her zaman kuralsızdır, soğukkanlı hesaplarla önceden tahmin edilemez.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

“Ama sevgililerin inandığı şeye hala inanmak istiyordum: karşılıksız, yenilgiye uğramış ya da çılgınlık dolu da olsa aşkın yerini tutacak başka bir şey olmadığına. Aşkın ruhların karışması, birleşmesi anlamına geldiğine; katışık, melez bir zafer olduğuna, içimizdeki yalnızlığın, yalıtılmışlığın, yalın, dogmatik ve saf olanın karşısında en iyi yönlerimizi bir araya getirdiğine; aşkın demokrasi olduğuna, kimsenin yalnız olmadığını anlattığına; klanın, kötü ve ayrımcı çoğunluğun karşısında iki kişinin yakınlığının zaferi olduğuna inanmak istiyordum. Aşksızlığı kibir gibi görmeye çalışıyordum, çünkü aşksızlardan, sevgisizlerden başka kim tam olduğuna, her şeyi gördüğüne, bildiğine inanırdı? Sevmek her şeye kadir olmayı, her şeyi bilmeyi yitirmek demekti. Hepimiz cahilce aşka düşeriz-bir tür düşüştür gerçekten. Gözlerimizi yumup yumuşak iniş yapma umuduyla uçurumdan aşağı atlarız. İnişimiz her zaman yumuşak olmaz ama ben yine de kendi kendime, o atlayış olmadan kimse canlanamaz diyordum. Ölümle sonuçlansa bile o atlayışın kendisidir yaşam.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

“Oysa onu acı acı seviyorlardı, asla karşılık veremeyecek kadar tutkulu bir sevgi duyuyorlardı ona; karşılık vermeyen sevgisinin izin verdiği ölçüde seviyorlardı onu.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

“Kaçınılmazı kucaklayarak ondan korkmamayı öğrendim. Size korku hakkında bir sır vereyim: Bir mutlakiyetçidir kendisi. Korku ya heptir ya hiç. Ya zalim bir zorba gibi bütün hayatınızı aptalca, kör edici bir kuvvetle yönetir ya da onu bertaraf edersiniz ve gücü bir anda duman olup yiter. Bir sır daha: Korkuya karşı devrimin, o adi despotu devirmenin cesaretle hemen hiç ilgisi yoktur. Çok daha basit bir şeydir ona karşı koymanın yolu: Hayatınıza devam etme isteği duyun yeter. Korkmayı bıraktım çünkü dünya üzerindeki zamanın kısıtlıysa, saçmalıklara ayıracak zamanım yok demekti.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

“Kaderini kucakla" dedi, "Sana üzüntü verenden keyif al. Kaçmak istediğin şeye doğru dön ve bütün kalbinle ona koş. Talihsizliğini yalnız ona dönüşerek aşabilirsin.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

“Hayatın sunduklarını kavramanın bu kavrayışın doğurduğu sonuçları dışarı yansıtmaktan kolay olması gibi. Bir darbe almanın karşılık verip vurmaktan kolay olması gibi.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh