Of course, the greater one’s need, the greater one’s propensity to be mesmerized.
VIKRAM SETHThose 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.
More Vikram Seth Quotes
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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 it’s possible to be multi-rooted, rather like a banyan tree, without being deracinated.
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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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Think of many things. Never place your happiness in one person’s power. Be just to yourself.
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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.
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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.
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It’s not the gods But our own hearts We need to fear. The evil starts Against all odds Not there but here.
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I sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias.
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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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I have a reputation for being hermitlike. I’m not. I’m just obsessed with my work.
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You can talk good ideas out of existence.
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God save us from people who mean well.
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I don’t think people give Indian society enough credit. We may not like to talk much about things but we do, basically, want to live and let live.
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I think goodness is about how person behaves to person, and also person to world, to nature.
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The past is the past, and he can’t make amends, only hope that the gain will outlast the damage.
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I am certainly not allergic to causes – particularly on subjects such as religious intolerance.
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Man without life companion is either god or beast.
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I don’t pick and choose subjects or settings; they pick and choose me.
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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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I need my natural laziness to be counteracted by obsession in order to do anything.
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I just love music – by no stretch of the imagination am I professionally competent.
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In spite of all temptations of belonging to many nations, I’ve remained an Indian.
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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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You know, I can imagine not writing a novel and writing poetry only.
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The thing about inspiration is that it takes your mind off everything else.
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God save us from people who mean well.
VIKRAM SETH