I tend to think that we are all pretty much alike. We all feel despair. We all have problems with relationships.
AKHIL SHARMAI tend to think that we are all pretty much alike. We all feel despair. We all have problems with relationships.
AKHIL SHARMAThe little babies are missing their families from their past lives.
AKHIL SHARMAMy 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.
AKHIL SHARMAMy parents are deeply pious Hindus.
AKHIL SHARMAI 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 SHARMAMoney 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.
AKHIL SHARMAFor me, a memoir is nonfiction and nonfiction has to be absolutely true.
AKHIL SHARMAWhile 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.
AKHIL SHARMAI 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 SHARMAIt 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.
AKHIL SHARMAExposition suggests a great trust in the reader, and this expression of trust makes a book feel tender.
AKHIL SHARMAThere are also so many emotional aspects to money – feelings of inadequacy, feelings of security. I am not sure if there needs to be more about money in fiction, but the absence of this aspect can make a story feel somehow frictionless and unreal.
AKHIL SHARMAThe babies have old souls and the old souls have to shrink to become little babies.
AKHIL SHARMAIt’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.
AKHIL SHARMAPeople 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.
AKHIL SHARMAAs a teacher, I can help my students see what is working and not working. I can show them certain solutions.
AKHIL SHARMA