Shalimar the Clown Quotes

“Our human tragedy is that we are unable to comprehend our experience, it slips through our fingers, we can't hold on to it, and the more time passes, the harder it gets...My father said that the natural world gave us explanations to compensate for the meanings we could not grasp. The slant of the cold sunlight on a winter pine, the music of water, an oar cutting the lake and the flight of birds, the mountains' nobility , the silence of the silence. We are given life but must accept that it is unattainable and rejoice in what can be held in the eye, the memory, the mind.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

“The inevitable triumph of illusion over reality that was the single most obvious truth about the history of the human race.”
― Salman Rushdie , Shalimar the Clown

“Freedom is not a tea party, India. Freedom is a war. ”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

“She saw him fracture into rainbow colors through the prism of her love.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

“When you pray for what you most want in the world, its opposite comes along with it. I was given a woman whom I truly loved and who truly loved me. The opposite side of such a love is the pain of its loss. I can only feel such pain today because until yesterday I knew that love.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

“You never know the answers to the questions of life until you are asked.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

“Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another's, were no longer our own, individual, discrete.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

“The beautiful came to this city [Hollywood] in huge pathetic herds, to suffer, to be humiliated, to see the powerful currency of their beauty devalued like the Russian ruble or Argentine peso;to work as bellhops, as bar hostesses, as garbage collectors, as maids. The city was a cliff and they were its stampeding lemmings. At the foot of the cliff was the valley of the broken dolls.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

“Be so good as to cease to cast yourself in fictions. Pinch yourself, or slap yourself across the face if that's what it takes, but understand, please, that you are nonfictional, and this is real life.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

“She watched him recede into the past as he stood...each successive moment of him passing before her eyes and being lost forever.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

“Докато не му ги зададат, човек не знае отговорите на въпросите на живота.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

“I am your handiwork made flesh. You took beauty and created hideousness, and out of this monstrosity your child will be born …. I am the meaning of your deeds. I am the meaning of your so-called love; your destructive, selfish, wanton love … your love looks just like hatred.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

“- Радвай се, че не си майка в такива времена – отвърна му тя. – Защото, ако беше, щеше да се радваш, че двамата ти скарани синове отново ще се съберат, но едновременно с това щеше да се изпълниш със страх, че и двете ти деца вероятно ще са мъртви. Противоречието на това щастие и този ужас би ти се сторило непоносимо.
- Радвай се, че не си мъж – каза в отговор той. – Защото, щом престанем да спим, виждаме, че на този свят до нас има единствено врагове – врагове, които се преструват, че ни защитават, които стоят, направени от оръжия и облекла в цвят каки, и алчност, и смърт, а зад тях са враговете, които се преструват, че ни спасяват в името на собствения ни Бог, само че и те също са изтъкани от смърт и алчност, а пък зад тях са враговете, живеещи сред нас, носещи безбожни имена, които ни прелъстяват и после ни предават, врагове, за които смъртта е прекалено меко наказание, а още по-отзад са враговете, които никога не виждаме, те дърпат конците на живота ни. Този последен враг, невидимият враг в невидимата стая в чуждата страна, някъде много далеч: пред него искам да се изправя, и ако се наложи да си проправя пътя през всички останали, за да се добера до него, тогава така и ще сторя.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

“There were six hundred thousand Indian troops in Kashmir but the pogrom of the pandits was not prevented, why was that. Three and a half lakhs
of human beings arrived in Jammu as displaced persons and for many months the government did not provide shelters or relief or even register
their names, why was that. When the government finally built camps it only allowed for six thousand families to remain in the state, dispersing the
others around the country where they would be invisible and impotent, why was that. The camps at Purkhoo, Muthi, Mishriwallah, Nagrota were built
on the banks and beds of nullahas, dry seasonal waterways, and when the water came the camps were flooded, why was that. The ministers of the
government made speeches about ethnic cleansing but the civil servants wrote one another memos saying that the pandits were simply internal
migrants whose displacement had been self-imposed, why was that. The tents provided for the refugees to live in were often uninspected and
leaking and the monsoon rains came through, why was that. When the one-room tenements called ORTs were built to replace the tents they too
leaked profusely, why was that. There was one bathroom per three hundred persons in many camps why was that and the medical dispensaries
lacked basic first-aid materials why was that and thousands of the displaced died because of inadequate food and shelter why was that maybe five
thousand deaths because of intense heat and humidity because of snake bites and gastroenteritis and dengue fever and stress diabetes and
kidney ailments and tuberculosis and psychoneurosis and there was not a single health survey conducted by the government why was that and the
pandits of Kashmir were left to rot in their slum camps, to rot while the army and the insurgency fought over the bloodied and broken valley, to
dream of return, to die while dreaming of return, to die after the dream of return died so that they could not even die dreaming of it, why was that why
was that why was that why was that why was that.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

“Страхът бе най-важният посев за годината, надвисваше от плодовите дръечета вместо ябълки и праскови, а пчелите го събираха вместо мед. Изпод повърхността на плитката вода на оризищата избуяваше гъст страх, а из шафрановите поля страх като увивен бурен задушаваше деликатните растения. Страхът затлачваше реките като воден зюмбюл , а по високите пасбища без видима причина измираха овце и кози. Работа се намираше трудно , и за актьори, и за готвачи. Ужасът мореше живата стока като чума.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

“Sardar Harbans Singh passed away peacefully in a wicker rocking-chair in a Srinigar garden of spring flowers and honeybees with his favourite tartan rug across his knees and his beloved son, Yuvraj the exporter of handicrafts, by his side, and when he stopped breathing the bees stopped buzzing and the air silenced its whispers and Yuvraj understood that the story of the world he had known all his life was coming to an end, and that what followed would follow as it had to, but it would unquestionably be less graceful, less courteous and less civilized than what had gone.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

“India's head ached. Insomnia was still her most attentive, cruelest lover, demanding and possessing her selfishly whenever it chose to do so. Light-heartedness was beyond her today. A man of middling quality was trying to marry her, and there was something wrong with her father's voice on the phone.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

“He stared into the fast-flowing waters and contemplated the tragedy of desire.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

“Кой запали този пожар? Кой изравни със земята тези овошки? Кой разстреля тези братя, които през целия си живо са се смели? Кой уби сарпанча? Кой счупи пръстите му? Кой счупи пръстите му? Кой счупи ръцете му? Кой счупи древния му врат? Кой окова тези мъже? Кой направи така, че мъжете да изчезнат? Кой разстреля тези момчета? Кой разстреля тези момичета? Кой събори тази къща? Кой събори онази къща? Кой събори тази къща? Кой събори онази къща? Кой уби този младеж? Кой удари по главата тази старица? Кой наръга тази леля? Кой разби носа на онзи човек? Кой разби сърцето на онова младо момиче? Кой уби този влюбен? Кой застреля годеницата му? Кой изгори костюмите? Кой натроши мечовете? Кой изгори библиотеката? Кой опожари шафрановото поле? Кой изколи животните? Кой изгори кошерите? Кой отрови оризищата? Кой уби децата? Кой бичува родителите? Кой изнасили онази жена с мързеливо око, докато тя крещеше за змийска отмъстителност? Кой изнасили онази жена отново? Кой изнасили онази жена отново? Кой изнасили онази жена отново? Кой изнасили онази мъртва жена? Кой изнасили онази мъртва жена отново?”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

“Сезоните на миналото образуваха планини в него, имената и лицата се блъскаха едни други в търсене на допълнително място, а претоварването от незабравени думи и дела го оставяха с разширени от ужас очи. По правило от времето се очакваше да лекува цялата болка, нали така? Ала ножът на неодобрението на покойния му баща отказваше да се притъпи, независимо от отминаващите месеци.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

“... learning the knack of disconnecting her sense of smell, until she could switch it off like a radio and in the bland silence of its absence could drown in the sound of Nazarébaddoor’s hypnotic voice without having her reverie interrupted by the scent of sheep shit or Nazarébaddoor’s own frequent and extraordinary buffalo farts.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

“She saw him fracture into rainbow colors through the prism of her love. She watched him recede into the past as he stood below her on the sidewalk, each successive moment of him passing before her eyes and being lost forever, surviving only in outer space in the form of escaping light-rays. This is what loss was, what death was: an escape into the luminous wave-forms, into the ineffable speed of the light-years and the parsecs, the eternally receding distances of the cosmos.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

“Did the mind discover likeness in the unlike in order to clarify the world, or to obscure the impossibility of such clarification? He didn’t know the answer. But it was one hell of a question.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

“Because once we stop being asleep we can see that there are only enemies for us in this world, the enemies pretending to defend us who stand before us made of guns and khaki and greed and death, and behind them the enemies pretending to rescue us in the name of our own God except that they’re made of death and greed as well, and behind them the enemies who live among us bearing ungodly names, who seduce us and then betray us, enemies for whom death is too lenient a punishment, and behind them the enemies we never see, the ones who pull the strings of our lives.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

“I’ve been asleep,” he said. She understood at once that her son wasn’t speaking literally but was telling her that he’d arrived at a turning point in his life, which was why she didn’t interrupt him even though he was on fire, speaking to her in the foulmouthed language his father had refused to use, the speech of a man who has started dreaming of death. A cold wind was slicing through her heart. “I’ve been wasting my time,” Shalimar the clown continued. “All I ever learned how to do is walk across a rope and fall over like an idiot and make a few bored people laugh. All that is becoming useless and not just because of the stupid television. I’ve been looking at bad things for so long that I’d stopped seeing them, but I’m not sleeping now and I see how it is: the real bad dream starts when you wake up, the men in tanks who hide their faces so that we don’t know their names and the women torturers who are worse than the men and the people made of barbed wire and the people made of electricity whose hands would fry your balls if they grabbed them and the people made of bullets and the people made of lies and they are all here to do something important, namely to fuck us until we’re dead. And now that I’ve woken up there is something important I need to do also and I don’t know how to go about it.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

“The beautiful came to this city in huge pathetic herds, to suffer, to be humiliated, to see the powerful currency of their beauty devalued like the Russian ruble or Argentine peso; to work as bellhops, as bar hostesses, as garbage collectors, as maids. The city was a cliff and they were its stampeding lemmings. At the foot of the cliff was the valley of the broken dolls.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

“She felt herself transformed into an abstraction. As if by wanting to put his hand on her he hoped to reach out to someone else, across unknown dimensions of sad memory and lost event. As if she were just a representative, a sign. She wanted to be the kind of woman who could ask a driver, who do you want to touch when you want to touch me. Who, when you abstain from touching me, is not being touched by you? Touch me, she wanted to say to his uncomprehending smile, I’ll be your conduit, your crystal ball.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

“He’s still young enough to have the idea that he can change history, whereas I am getting accustomed to the idea of being useless, and a man who feels useless stops feeling like a man. So if he is fired up by the possibility of being useful, don’t put out that flame. Maybe killing bastards is what the times require. Maybe if my hands still worked I would strangle a few myself.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

“In the old stories, love made possible a kind of spiritual contact between lovers long separated by necessity or chance. In the days before telecommunications, true love itself was enough. A woman left at home would close her eyes and the power of her need would enable her to see her man on his ocean ship battling pirates with cutlass and pistol, her man in the battle’s fray with his sword and shield, standing victorious among the corpses on some foreign field, her man crossing a distant desert whose sands were on fire, her man amid mountain peaks, drinking the driven snow. So long as he lived she would follow his journey, she would know the day-by-day of it, the hour-by-hour, would feel his elation and his grief, would fight temptation with him and with him rejoice in the beauty of the world; and if he died a spear of love would fly back across the world to pierce her waiting, omniscient heart. It would be the same for him. In the midst of the desert’s fire he would feel her cool hand on his cheek and in the heat of battle she would murmur words of love into his ear: live, live. And more: he would know her dailiness too, her moods, her illnesses, her labors, her loneliness, her thoughts. The bond of their communion would never break. That was what the stories said about love. That was what human beings knew love to be.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

“Смерть - найнаочніша з усіх відсутностей.
***
У царстві тварин немає місця несподіванкам. Із людьми ж усе зовсім не так. Люди непердбачувані та мінливі. Тільки людина, знаючи, як буде добре і правильно, все одно чинить погано. Тільки людина здатна роками носити маску, і то не одну. Тільки людина сама себе засмучує власними вчинками.
***
Втрата мрії однієї людиною, втрата рідного дому, порушення прав лише однієї людини, вбивство тільки однієї жінки - це втрата всіх наших свобод, всіх рідних домівок і всіх наших прагнень і сподівань. Будь-яка трагедія індивідуальна, але, водночас, це і трагедія всього людства.
***
"Цивілвзація не визнає кордонів", - пояснювава йому Макс старший. Щоправда, коли Європу накрило хвилею варварства, виявилося, що й варварство не визнає кордонів.
***
Нам іще дуже поталанило, бо ми маємо досить широкий вибір, від чого померти.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown