My parents are deeply pious Hindus.
AKHIL SHARMAAlso, 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.
More Akhil Sharma Quotes
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People often need to describe things quickly and so they use a shorthand. The problem is that after they use a label, they begin to think only in terms of the label instead of the totality of the experience a novel provides.
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The babies have old souls and the old souls have to shrink to become little babies.
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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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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 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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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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Exposition suggests a great trust in the reader, and this expression of trust makes a book feel tender.
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As a teacher, I can help my students see what is working and not working. I can show them certain solutions.
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As a human being living one’s life, one is more open to relief when there is rain or the expectation of rain. That readiness for hope gets manifested in my stories and that of many other Indian writers.
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It’s easy when you grow up in fear to act out of fear. I don’t want to embrace that fear; I prefer to be kind.
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Money is part of how we move through the world, what stores and restaurants we go into, whether we take a train to the airport or a taxi. Describing characters living in the real world requires describing them engaging with money.
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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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My thirty-seventh birthday had just come and gone, the end of 2008 was approaching, and I was constantly aware of how little I had managed to accomplish.
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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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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.
AKHIL SHARMA