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.
VIKRAM SETHRevision 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.
More Vikram Seth Quotes
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You can talk good ideas out of existence.
VIKRAM SETH -
Every object strives for its proper place. A book seeks to be near its truest admirer. Just as this helpless moth seeks to be near the candle that infatuates him.
VIKRAM SETH -
God save us from people who mean well.
VIKRAM SETH -
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?
VIKRAM SETH -
Is it not love that knows how to make smooth things rough and rough things smooth?
VIKRAM SETH -
I want my books to sell, to be read. I’m not interested in being obscure.
VIKRAM SETH -
I need my natural laziness to be counteracted by obsession in order to do anything.
VIKRAM SETH -
And an equation is the same whether it’s written in red or green ink.
VIKRAM SETH -
Put your backbone where your wishbone is.
VIKRAM SETH -
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.
VIKRAM SETH -
I think if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. And worth thinking about it as well.
VIKRAM SETH -
I tend to follow a scattershot approach to reading a lot of very diverse subjects interest me, and I’m quite happy to read stuff on any of them.
VIKRAM SETH -
You will get what you want but you must want it and not just wish it.
VIKRAM SETH -
And the process of reading is such a private one. I once came into a room where a friend of mine was reading one of my books, and he clicked his tongue impatiently and shooed me off.
VIKRAM SETH -
Good books get praised, bad books get praised. Good books get ignored, bad books get ignored.
VIKRAM SETH