“There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.”

“Some books you read. Some books you enjoy. But some books just swallow you up, heart and soul.”

“Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to open it. And if they open it and read it, they don't have to like it. And if you read it and you dislike it, you don't have to remain silent about it. You can write to me, you can complain about it, you can write to the publisher, you can write to the papers, you can write your own book. You can do all those things, but there your rights stop. No one has the right to stop me writing this book. No one has the right to stop it being published, or sold, or bought, or read.”

“Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I'd rather boast about the ones I've read.”

“Indian reviewers don’t read books. They have two days to produce 800 words. They read the prologue and then skim a few pages, then they read all the other reviews. If the first two are negative, you can be sure they will all be negative. If the first two are good, the rest will be good. It’s that low-level, that pathetic. It takes a kind of confidence for a reviewer to have their own opinion about a book. And a lot of people here just don’t care about literary novels.”

“Woe to the book you can read without constantly wondering about the author!”

“Have you ever given someone a book you enjoyed enormously, with a feeling of envy because they were about to read it for the first time, an experience you could never have again?”

“Some people you will always have about you whom you can trust, and no man these days can boast of more than that. Remember them; forget the others.”

“That was one thing about books: once you read them they couldn’t be unread.”

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”