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 SETHThere are plenty of good Indian writers in English, and none of us feel we are carrying the burden of being a poster boy.
More Vikram Seth Quotes
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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.
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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.
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God save us from people who mean well.
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I am certainly not allergic to causes – particularly on subjects such as religious intolerance.
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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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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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It is exciting to write about the present once one gets beyond the trivia of the moment. As a time to live in, as a time to think about, the present is intriguing.
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You will get what you want but you must want it and not just wish it.
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In life’s brief game to be a winner A man must have; oh yes, above All else, of course, someone to love.
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And an equation is the same whether it’s written in red or green ink.
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I often feel newspapers are just filling up space. Of course, I also know people who write really long books.
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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.
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Good books get praised, bad books get praised. Good books get ignored, bad books get ignored.
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Think of many things. Never place your happiness in one person’s power. Be just to yourself.
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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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Poetry, I think, intensifies the reader’s experience. If it’s a humorous facet of the story, poetry makes it more exuberant. If it’s a sad facet, poetry can make it more poignant.
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I just love music – by no stretch of the imagination am I professionally competent.
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To not be able to love the one you love is to have your life wrenched away.
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Don’t put things off till it’s too late. You are the DJ of your fate.
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I have a reputation for being hermitlike. I’m not. I’m just obsessed with my work.
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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.
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There are plenty of good Indian writers in English, and none of us feel we are carrying the burden of being a poster boy.
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Dear though the reader might be, I’d be silly to cater to what the reader wanted.
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I think if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. And worth thinking about it as well.
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Boredom provides a stronger inclination to write than anything.
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I think it’s possible to be multi-rooted, rather like a banyan tree, without being deracinated.
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