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 SETHI’m not sure anyone can understand a whole life, even their own.
More Vikram Seth Quotes
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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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The thing about inspiration is that it takes your mind off everything else.
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I need my natural laziness to be counteracted by obsession in order to do anything.
VIKRAM SETH -
I think goodness is about how person behaves to person, and also person to world, to nature.
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God save us from people who mean well.
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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 -
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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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 -
What is the difference between my life and my love? One gets me low, the other lets me go.
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I want my books to sell, to be read. I’m not interested in being obscure.
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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 -
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 -
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.
VIKRAM SETH -
Don’t put things off till it’s too late. You are the DJ of your fate.
VIKRAM SETH -
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 think it’s possible to be multi-rooted, rather like a banyan tree, without being deracinated.
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For a writer, obsession is a good substitute for self-discipline.
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Of course, the greater one’s need, the greater one’s propensity to be mesmerized.
VIKRAM SETH -
And an equation is the same whether it’s written in red or green ink.
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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.
VIKRAM SETH -
Boredom provides a stronger inclination to write than anything.
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Music, such music, is a sufficient gift. Why ask for happiness; why hope not to grieve? It is enough, it is to be blessed enough, to live from day to day and to hear such music-not too much, or the soul could not sustain it-from time to time.
VIKRAM SETH -
Man without life companion is either god or beast.
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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.
VIKRAM SETH -
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