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 SETHI think if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. And worth thinking about it as well.
More Vikram Seth Quotes
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I sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias.
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You get your inspiration – suggestions – wherever you have to, even from your mother.
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What is the difference between my life and my love? One gets me low, the other lets me go.
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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.
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I want my books to sell, to be read. I’m not interested in being obscure.
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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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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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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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You will get what you want but you must want it and not just wish it.
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For a writer, obsession is a good substitute for self-discipline.
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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.
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Boredom provides a stronger inclination to write than anything.
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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.
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I am certainly not allergic to causes – particularly on subjects such as religious intolerance.
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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