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"Once in a very long time you come across a book that is far, far more than the ink, the glue and the paper, a book that seeps into your blood."
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"I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature."

"When you think about the period in which Agatha Christie's crime novels were written, they are actually quite edgy for the time."

"I cannot comprehend the neglect of a family library in such days as these."- Mr. Darcy."

"I am no indiscriminate novel reader. The mere trash of the common circulating library I hold in the highest contempt."

"There is a great deal to be said in favour of reading a novel backwards. The last page is as a rule the most interesting, and when one begins with the catastrophe or the dA©nouement one feels on pleasant terms of equality with the author. It is like going behind the scenes of a theatre. One is no longer taken in, and the hair-breadth escapes of the hero and the wild agonies of the heroine leave one absolutely unmoved. One knows the jealously guarded secret, and one can afford to smile at the quite unnecessary anxiety that the puppets of fiction always consider it their duty to display."

"I have been used to consider poetry as "the food of love" said Darcy."Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what isstrong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, Iam convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away."

"Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that."

"All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril."

"If a book is well written, I always find it too short."
Explore more quotes by Tahir Shah


"A journey of observation must leave as much as possible to chance. Random movement is the best plan for maximum observation."


"Osman and Prideep had been in my employment for some weeks. Every Friday I would take the to lunch. It was the high point of their calender. During the meal I would harangue them as a reminder of what they had been hired for: but my orations never seemed to increase their output. I realised later that, in the East, a commitment to produce does not automatically accompany employment."


"Running an expedition can bring out the worst in a man. It can make you a power-crazed monster."


"For me, a journey to Damascus is an amazing hunt from beginning to end, a slice through layers of history in search of treasure."


"In some peculiar way, indeed, the rules were now beginning to seem quite logical. It was then I knew that I had been in India long enough."


"As the man was bundled into an armoured police van, he turned and shouted: 'Don't waste your life following others! Be individual! Live your dreams!'I stood there thinking. He was right. Ours is a society of followers, trapped by an island mentality."
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