Rushdie Books Quotes & Sayings

OK, publishing a book and releasing a movie is all very well, but Tottenham beating Man. U. 3-2 ... priceless. — Salman Rushdie

Nobody has the right to not be offended. That right doesn't exist in any declaration I have ever read.
If you are offended it is your problem, and frankly lots of things offend lots of people.
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.
To read a 600-page novel and then say that it has deeply offended you: well, you have done a lot of work to be offended. — Salman Rushdie

I grew up kissing books and bread, — Salman Rushdie

The world of books continued to send him messages. Bharati Mukherjee and Clark Blaise wrote from America to tell him that people were making I AM SALMAN RUSHDIE button badges and proudly wearing them as a sign of their solidarity. He wanted one of those badges. Maybe Joseph Anton could wear a badge in solidarity with the person he both was and was not. Gita Mehta told him by telephone, a little waspishly, that "The Satanic Verses is not your Lear. Shame is your Lear. — Salman Rushdie

Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one. — Salman Rushdie

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

Bread and books: food for the body and food for the soul - what could be more worthy of our respect, and even love? — Salman Rushdie

Burn the books and trust the Book; shred the papers and hear the Word. — Salman Rushdie

I write books I'd enjoy reading, I'm the reader standing behind my shoulder. — Salman Rushdie

I don't read my books, I write them. Once I've finished the many years it usually takes me to write them, I can't bear to read them, because I've spent too long with them already. I'm not advertising them very well, am I? — Salman Rushdie

I don't like books that seem to want to teach me things. Which is not to say that one doesn't learn from books - but you do your own learning in your own way. — Salman Rushdie

I grew up reading 'The Jungle Books' and loving them. — Salman Rushdie

The lesson [comic books] taught children- or this child, at any rate- was perhaps the unintentionally radical truth that exceptionality was the greatest and most heroic of values; that those who were unlike the crowd were to be treasured the most lovingly; and that this exceptionality was a treasure so great that it had to be concealed, in ordinary life, beneath what the comic books called a 'secret identity'. — Salman Rushdie

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 vs. Goons, L.A. Times, April 24, 2005] — Salman Rushdie

When a book leaves its author's desk it changes. Even before anyone has read it, before eyes other than its creator's have looked upon a single phrase, it is irretrievably altered. It has become a book that can be read, that no longer belongs to its maker. It has acquired, in a sense, free will. It will make its journey through the world and there is no longer anything the author can do about it. Even he, as he looks at its sentences, reads them differently now that they can be read by others. They look like different sentences. The book has gone out into the world and the world has remade it. — Salman Rushdie

This was Heather Kozar, the newly elected Playmate of the Year, a very young girl with excellent manners who disappointingly insisted on calling him sir. "I'm sorry, sir, I haven't read any of your books," she apologized. "To tell you the truth, I don't read a lot of books, sir, because they make me feel tired and go to sleep." Yes, yes, he agreed, he often felt exactly the same way. "But there are some books, sir," she added, "like Vogue, which I feel I have to read to keep up with what's going on. — Salman Rushdie

If you walk away from God you should probably try to stay in the good books of Luck. — Salman Rushdie

People are always telling me that they've seen people reading my books on the subway, or the beach, or whenever. — Salman Rushdie

I am not in the business of suppressing books. — Salman Rushdie

Reading is a very different thing than performing. In fact, one of the things I think that doesn't work in books on tape is if the person doing the reading "acts" too much; it becomes irritating to you listening to it. — Salman Rushdie

One of the things I do take some pride in is that if you had never read an article about my life, if you knew nothing about me, except that my books were being set in front of you to read, and if you were to read those books in sequence, I don't think you would say to yourself, 'Oh my God, something terrible happened to this writer in 1989.' — Salman Rushdie

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. — Salman Rushdie

A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return. — Salman Rushdie

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. — Salman Rushdie

It's always been colossally important to me that my books should be well received in India. It's where I come from. — Salman Rushdie

You want all your books to stick around after you've gone. — Salman Rushdie

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist. — Salman Rushdie

It may be that the books that were best liked in your lifetime are not the ones that are best liked 100 years later. — Salman Rushdie

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. — Salman Rushdie

It is very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it. — Salman Rushdie

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. — Salman Rushdie

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. — Salman Rushdie

What I've always tried to find in my books are points at which the private lives of the characters, and also my own, intersect with the public life of the culture. — Salman Rushdie

I don't like books that play to the gallery, but I've become more concerned with telling a story as clearly and engagingly as I can. — Salman Rushdie

The reason why books endure is because there are enough people who like them. It's the only reason why books last. — Salman Rushdie

Free people write books," it said. "Free people publish books. Free people sell books. Free people buy books. Free people read books. In the spirit of America's commitment to free expression we inform the public that this book will be available to readers at bookshops and libraries throughout the country. — Salman Rushdie