I can’t have composite characters. I can’t attribute dialogue to someone based simply on my memory and not based on notes taken at the time that the words were spoken.
AKHIL SHARMASeven years into writing a novel, I started to lose my mind.
More Akhil Sharma Quotes
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Intern will resonate not only with doctors, but with anyone who has struggled with the grand question ‘What should I do with my life?’ In a voice of profound honesty and intelligence,
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We all become afraid. We all look at others and think these other people are more fortunate than us.
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It is hard to create a first-person narrator that can be a child and yet is able to take in enough information for the narrative to be legible to the reader.
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The tears loosen their memories so they can slide away. They cry at the life they have lost, and then they cry at everything they’ll forget.
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Also, I have to assume that readers are sophisticated enough to know that not every person in a community is the same, and so there are many people who would not force an abortion just because a fetus is female.
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Certainly the details of our life are unique. Spending time thinking of how I am different from someone else, however, does not tend to be very productive.
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I tend to think that we are all pretty much alike. We all feel despair. We all have problems with relationships.
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I realized that he was writing about good people doing good things. This did not match my experience of life and so I found my sentences stretching and becoming less plain.
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My parents are deeply pious Hindus.
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Ernest Hemingway has been the most important influence on me as a writer. But at a certain point as a writer,
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For me, a lot of the humor comes not from innocence but from characters trying to figure out how to get what they need. I don’t try to be funny, but am relieved when an opportunity comes up for humor.
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Even within my stories, people hold opposing views.
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If anybody reads an Indian newspaper, all these things are obvious, and so I am not breaking news. All I am doing is representing my community as it actually is.
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For me, a memoir is nonfiction and nonfiction has to be absolutely true.
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The little babies are missing their families from their past lives.
AKHIL SHARMA