What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness second, their imagination, and third, their industry.

The remark proposes a three-part hierarchy of artistic excellence: emotional receptivity (“sensibility and tenderness”) comes first, because art begins in the capacity to feel acutely and to respond humanely to experience. Imagination follows as the power that transforms felt life into new forms—metaphor, story, style—rather than merely reporting it. Only third is “industry,” the disciplined labor that revises, structures, and completes the work. The ordering matters: Rushdie implies that craft and productivity cannot compensate for a lack of inner responsiveness or creative vision, while also insisting that feeling and imagination must be realized through sustained effort to become art.