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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

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 often feel newspapers are just filling up space. Of course, I also know people who write really long books.
VIKRAM SETH

Book Feeling Media Myself News People Space Writing
Of course, the greater one’s need, the greater one’s propensity to be mesmerized.
VIKRAM SETH

Greatness Mesmerize Need
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
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
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

Carry Feeling Goodness Man Writing
I’m not sure anyone can understand a whole life, even their own.
VIKRAM SETH

Life Myself Understand
I don’t think people give Indian society enough credit. We may not like to talk much about things but we do, basically, want to live and let live.
VIKRAM SETH

Enough Live Myself People Talk Thinking
I think goodness is about how person behaves to person, and also person to world, to nature.
VIKRAM SETH

Goodness Myself Nature Person Thinking World
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
God save us from people who mean well.
VIKRAM SETH

God One Liner People Save
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

Friendship Myself Patience Privacy Process Reading Room
Quietly they moved down the calm and sacred river that had come down to earth so that its waters might flow over the ashes of those long dead, and that would continue to flow long after the human race had, through hatred and knowledge, burned itself out.
VIKRAM SETH

Burn Calm Earth Flow Hate Human Knowledge Quiet Race River
The thing about inspiration is that it takes your mind off everything else.
VIKRAM SETH

Inspirational Mindset Yourself
In spite of all temptations of belonging to many nations, I’ve remained an Indian.
VIKRAM SETH

Myself Nation Temptation
You will get what you want but you must want it and not just wish it.
VIKRAM SETH

Inspirational Motivational 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.

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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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