Salman Rushdie

[…] because when you throw everything up in the air anything becomes possible – wayupthere, at any rate, changes took place in delirious actors that would have gladdened the heart of old Mr Lamarck […]

Mirza Saeed drew up the chick blinds and fastened their cords.

Damnfool thing to be asking. Might as well inquire, what possessed you to rush in here?

The body of Al-Lat has shrivelled on the grass, leaving behind only a dark stain; and now every clock in the capital city of Desh begins to chime, and goes on unceasingly, beyond twelve, beyond twenty-four, beyond one thousand and one, announcing the end of Time, the hour that is beyond measuring, the hour of the exile's return, of the victory of water over wine, of the commencement of the Untime of the Imam.

On clear nights when the moon was full, she waited for its shining revenant ghost.

Stores, dealerships, galleries struggled to satisfy the skyrocketing demand for ever more recherché produce: limited-edition olive oils, three-hundred-dollar corkscrews, customized Humvees, the latest anti-virus software, escort services featuring contortionists and twins, video installations, outsider art, featherlight shawls made from the chin-fluff of extinct mountain goats.

It took an effort to restrain himself, and in a level voice to reassure earnest young Mark in his David Ogilvy-clone outfit that even the most red-faced colonels in England were unlikely to be upset by his banal formulation.

After getting out of Beloved Ali's cab he'd picked up a copy of the News and the Post, then had taken an erratic route home, walking fast, as if trying to escape something....Ellen DeGeneres, posters proclaimed, was coming soon to the Beacon Theatre.

When he got home from the parade, however, Professor Solanka was seized by melancholy, his usual secret sadness, which he sublimated into the public sphere. Something was amiss with the world. The optimistic peace-and-love philosophy of his youth having given him up, he no longer knew how to reconcile himself to an increasingly phoney […] reality.

In all of India, China, Africa, and much of the southern American continent, those who had the leisure and wallet for fashion […] would have killed for the street merchandise of Manhattan, as also for […] the reject china and designer-label bargains to be found in downtown discount emporia.