Salman Rushdie Quotes

If you will read again what is written, you will see how it was.

The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.

Text without context is pretext.

We have not read an author till we have seen his object, whatever it may be, as he saw it.

You can't expect that, after a poor fellow has written a book, he should also understand it.

But whether thus submissively or not, at least be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.

There are readers who want every point to be clearly and unambiguously set forth, and there are those who want to pry ideas and meanings out for themselves.

I don't think there's anything wrong with someone having to read a poem twice. Or even a book.

Man’s writing has but one true sense, which is that which the Author meant when he writ it.

People would much rather argue their own visions and conceptions about a book than engage in a dialogue with the author, because the author could always trump you with, 'I wrote it.'

If you take my sayings and explode them in the air, they remain only sayings. But if you fit them together in their correct places, you will have the whole story.

Fact explains nothing. On the contrary, it is fact that requires explanation.

It's good to know how to read, but it's dangerous to know how to read and not how to interpret what you're reading.

Meaning comes from the capacity to see what is not in some simple, objective sense there on the printed page.

I love it when people want to interpret my books.

I'm here to make sense.

This is a much more fitting interpretation of the book than its modern interpretation.

Without philosophy, history is always for me dead and dumb.

Something's that written out is okay, but it's not always a clear indication of what a person means.

I do a lot of readings.

It is possible to interpret without observing, but not to observe without interpreting.

Reality does not easily give up meaning; it's the biographer's job to clobber it into submission. You're meant not only to tame it but to extract substance, to identify cause and axiomatic effect. You subsist on the tactical omissions, the hollow words, the oddly unconnected dots.

There is a profound difference between information and meaning.

Sometimes I read reviews, and without exception I will read critical essays that are sent to me. The critical essays are interesting on their own terms.

One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well.