In spite of all temptations of belonging to many nations, I’ve remained an Indian.
VIKRAM SETHYou 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.
More Vikram Seth Quotes
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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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The thing about inspiration is that it takes your mind off everything else.
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I don’t pick and choose subjects or settings; they pick and choose me.
VIKRAM SETH -
I need my natural laziness to be counteracted by obsession in order to do anything.
VIKRAM SETH -
Is it not love that knows how to make smooth things rough and rough things smooth?
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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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Dear though the reader might be, I’d be silly to cater to what the reader wanted.
VIKRAM SETH -
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 -
Good books get praised, bad books get praised. Good books get ignored, bad books get ignored.
VIKRAM SETH -
I have a reputation for being hermitlike. I’m not. I’m just obsessed with my work.
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God save us from people who mean well.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
VIKRAM SETH