All SALMAN RUSHDIE Quotes about “Books”

“When a reader falls in love with a book, it leaves its essence inside him, like radioactive fallout in an arable field, and after that there are certain crops that will no longer grow in him, while other, stranger, more fantastic growths may occasionally be produced.”
“Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.”
“A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.”
“A book is not completed till it's read.”
“What had been (at the beginning) no bigger than a full stop had expanded into a comma, a word, a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter; now it was bursting into more complex developments, becoming, one might say, a book - perhaps an encylopaedia - even a whole language.”
“It is very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it.”
“The publishing of a book is a worldwide event. The attempt to suppress a book is a worldwide event.”
“Science fiction is always a vehicle for ideas. It's the form which allows either movies or books to be an exploration of how we should live.”
“The real risks for any artist are taken in pushing the work to the limits of what is possible, in the attempt to increase the sum of what it is possible to think. Books become good when they go to this edge and risk falling over it -when they endanger the artist by reason of what he has, or has not, artistically dared.”
“I grew up kissing books and bread.”
“In the end, you write the book that grabs you by the throat and demands to be written.”
“Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.”
“It's so disappointing, to put it mildly, that people know so much about my life. Because it means that they're always trying to look at my books in terms of my life.”
“I write books I'd enjoy reading, I'm the reader standing behind my shoulder.”
“Every time you finish a book, you have a terrible feeling that there's just never going to be another one. But fortunately, so far, the next one has always shown up.”
“When I'm writing books, something weird happens; and the result is the books contain a large amount of what you could call 'supernaturalism.' As a writer, I find I need that to explain the world I'm writing about.”
“Very often, people who actually pick up a book of mine for the first time are kind of surprised. And I get these letters saying, well, who knew that you were good, you know?”
“Nobody ever recognizes themselves unless they are not the character. There are many people who have claimed to be in my books, but unfortunately they were usually people that I didn't know.”
“It may be that the books that were best liked in your lifetime are not the ones that are best liked 100 years later.”
“I can walk into a bookshop and point out a number of books that I find very unattractive in what they say. But it doesn't occur to me to burn the bookshop down. If you don't like a book, read another book. If you start reading a book and you decide you don't like it, nobody is telling you to finish it.”
“When you are writing a book, it feels as if you are simply concentrating on the world of the book and that whatever is happening in your personal life is outside the room, as it were. But maybe that's just the way you have to talk to yourself to make it possible.”
“You start at the stupid end of the book, and if you're lucky you finish at the smart end.”
“Nobody wants to read a 600 page book in which the author is fabulous throughout.”

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