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The thing about inspiration is that it takes your mind off everything else.

Vikram Seth

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
Boredom provides a stronger inclination to write than anything.
VIKRAM SETH

Boredom Strong Writing
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
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
I certainly think its very important that writers as citizens – not necessarily as writers, but just as ordinary citizens – should talk about things that matter to them.
VIKRAM SETH

Citizenship Important Myself Talk Thinking Writing
The thing about inspiration is that it takes your mind off everything else.
VIKRAM SETH

Inspirational Mindset Yourself
Of course, the greater one’s need, the greater one’s propensity to be mesmerized.
VIKRAM SETH

Greatness Mesmerize Need
You get your inspiration – suggestions – wherever you have to, even from your mother.
VIKRAM SETH

Inspirational Mom Yourself
In life’s brief game to be a winner A man must have; oh yes, above All else, of course, someone to love.
VIKRAM SETH

Game Life Love Man Winner
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
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
I need my natural laziness to be counteracted by obsession in order to do anything.
VIKRAM SETH

Lazy Myself Natural Need Obsession Order
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
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
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
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

The thing about inspiration is that it takes your mind off everything else.

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The thing about inspiration is that it takes your mind off everything else.

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