Even within my stories, people hold opposing views.
AKHIL SHARMAThe monsoon is such a dominant part of Indian life that it is hard to overstate its importance.
More Akhil Sharma Quotes
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I can guide them to books that will serve as role models. Largely, though, one learns to write almost like developing muscle memory, and this requires years of effort.
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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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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.
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For me, a memoir is nonfiction and nonfiction has to be absolutely true.
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Exposition suggests a great trust in the reader, and this expression of trust makes a book feel tender.
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Seven years into writing a novel, I started to lose my mind.
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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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While a dramatized scene is a way of proving and guaranteeing an emotional experience for the reader, exposition assumes that the reader is sophisticated and can see the universal.
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Why do people always think hurting others is all right, as long as they hurt themselves as well?
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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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One’s life completely changes based on the rain. After the monsoon, because the dust settles, one can see further and so it feels like one’s eyesight has improved or that one is living in a different country where there is more light.
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The little babies are missing their families from their past lives.
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I need to tell the things that are important but which don’t make sense in terms of the narrative, things that would destroy symmetry or narrative pace. This is my personal belief about what it means to write nonfiction.
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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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We all become afraid. We all look at others and think these other people are more fortunate than us.
AKHIL SHARMA