Before there were books, there were stories.
-- Salman Rushdie (Wonder Tales)

Importance: With this opening line from the collection's opening essay, "Wonder Tales," Rushdie establishes his overarching interest in exploring the ways in which story has sustained humanity throughout time. Rushdie introduces this notion employing the syntax and tone of a creation myth. In this way, he embodies and enacts the phenomenon he is describing. This moment and the surrounding passage are also significant, in that they liken story to food, thus emphasizing the ways in which humans use stories to explain themselves, their world, and to combat all facets of the human experience.

The point about protean in literature . . . is that life's like that, life itself is not one thing but many, not singular but multiform, not constant but infinitely mutable.
-- Salman Rushdie (Proteus)

Importance: Throughout his essay "Proteus," Rushdie uses the god Proteus's shape-shifting character as a way to explore the possibilities and responsibilities of literary art...