I sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias.
VIKRAM SETHPoetry, I think, intensifies the reader’s experience. If it’s a humorous facet of the story, poetry makes it more exuberant. If it’s a sad facet, poetry can make it more poignant.
More Vikram Seth Quotes
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I think it’s possible to be multi-rooted, rather like a banyan tree, without being deracinated.
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Revision has its own peculiar pleasures and its own peculiar frustrations. The ground rules are already established; the characters already exist. You don’t have to bring the characters to life, but you do have to make them more convincing.
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I’m not sure anyone can understand a whole life, even their own.
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Those books of mine that are remunerative – I’m not talking about poetry here – take years to write, and I am never sure they’ll be successful. So writing is a risk in more senses than one.
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You have to learn a few things, which you do along the way, but basically, poetry is a matter of the ear. Iambic pentameters or what constitutes a stanza comes naturally – your ears will know.
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So many Indian novels, quite unfairly, do not get the prominence they should because they have been written in a language other than English.
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For a writer, obsession is a good substitute for self-discipline.
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You know, I can imagine not writing a novel and writing poetry only.
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To not be able to love the one you love is to have your life wrenched away.
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Don’t put things off till it’s too late. You are the DJ of your fate.
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Is it not love that knows how to make smooth things rough and rough things smooth?
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My eyes close. I am here and not here. A waking nap? A flight to the end of the galaxy and perhaps a couple of billion light-years beyond?
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All you who sleep tonight Far from the ones you love, No hand to left or right, An emptiness above– Know that you aren’t alone. The whole world shares your tears, Some for two nights or one, And some for all your years.
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I think if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. And worth thinking about it as well.
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Fiction basically is a form of gossip where you want to enter other people’s lives, the lives of people you don’t know, and you want to know what’s going to happen to them.
VIKRAM SETH






