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I rarely listen to music while writing. If I don’t like it, it bothers me, and if I like it, it absorbs me so much I can’t write.

Vikram Seth

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

Fiction Gossip Live People Yourself
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

Distract Economics Feeling Happiness Life Myself Novel Writing
I think if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. And worth thinking about it as well.
VIKRAM SETH

Action Myself Thinking Worth
For a writer, obsession is a good substitute for self-discipline.
VIKRAM SETH

Discipline Obsession Substitute Writing
Dear though the reader might be, I’d be silly to cater to what the reader wanted.
VIKRAM SETH

Myself Reading
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

Beyond Couple End Eyes Light Wake Up
I simply seem to drift. But I sort of allow the drift, because it has a kind of check – it forces me to work harder at what I’m interested in.
VIKRAM SETH

Force Hard Interest Kind Myself Simplicity Work
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

Learning Natural Poetry Way Yourself
I’m not sure anyone can understand a whole life, even their own.
VIKRAM SETH

Life Myself Understand
To not be able to love the one you love is to have your life wrenched away.
VIKRAM SETH

Hard Time Heart Broken Life Love Yourself
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

Book Oneself Poetry Risk Success Talk Writing
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.
VIKRAM SETH

Character Establishment Existence Happiness Revision Yourself
I rarely listen to music while writing. If I don’t like it, it bothers me, and if I like it, it absorbs me so much I can’t write.
VIKRAM SETH

Listening Music Myself Poet Writing
So many Indian novels, quite unfairly, do not get the prominence they should because they have been written in a language other than English.
VIKRAM SETH

English Language Novel Writing
In a painting, you can’t make out whether the artist painted the left eye before the right eye. In Chinese calligraphy, you can see the progression of the artist’s stroke.
VIKRAM SETH

Artist Paint Progress See Yourself
It’s not the gods But our own hearts We need to fear. The evil starts Against all odds Not there but here.
VIKRAM SETH

Evil Fear God Heart Need Start

I rarely listen to music while writing. If I don’t like it, it bothers me, and if I like it, it absorbs me so much I can’t write.

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I rarely listen to music while writing. If I don’t like it, it bothers me, and if I like it, it absorbs me so much I can’t write.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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