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 SETHI certainly think its very important that writers as citizens – not necessarily as writers, but just as ordinary citizens – should talk about things that matter to them.
More Vikram Seth Quotes
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Dear though the reader might be, I’d be silly to cater to what the reader wanted.
VIKRAM SETH -
Music, such music, is a sufficient gift. Why ask for happiness; why hope not to grieve? It is enough, it is to be blessed enough, to live from day to day and to hear such music-not too much, or the soul could not sustain it-from time to time.
VIKRAM SETH -
I certainly think its very important that writers as citizens – not necessarily as writers, but just as ordinary citizens – should talk about things that matter to them.
VIKRAM SETH -
There are plenty of good Indian writers in English, and none of us feel we are carrying the burden of being a poster boy.
VIKRAM SETH -
I spent many years of my life as an economist and demographer. I was finally distracted by writing my novels and poetry. I’m enormously happy that was the case. I feel that with writing I have found my metier.
VIKRAM SETH -
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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I need my natural laziness to be counteracted by obsession in order to do anything.
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I think it’s possible to be multi-rooted, rather like a banyan tree, without being deracinated.
VIKRAM SETH -
Think of many things. Never place your happiness in one person’s power. Be just to yourself.
VIKRAM SETH -
It’s not the gods But our own hearts We need to fear. The evil starts Against all odds Not there but here.
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I want my books to sell, to be read. I’m not interested in being obscure.
VIKRAM SETH -
Of course, the greater one’s need, the greater one’s propensity to be mesmerized.
VIKRAM SETH -
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.
VIKRAM SETH -
In spite of all temptations of belonging to many nations, I’ve remained an Indian.
VIKRAM SETH -
And an equation is the same whether it’s written in red or green ink.
VIKRAM SETH