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 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.
More Akhil Sharma Quotes
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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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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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Why do people always think hurting others is all right, as long as they hurt themselves as well?
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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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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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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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My parents are deeply pious Hindus.
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To me exposition always contains tenderness.
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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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Novels should be judged rigorously. Either a book works or it doesn’t. The fact that something is true in the real world should not lend authority to it in fiction.
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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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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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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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The monsoon is such a dominant part of Indian life that it is hard to overstate its importance.
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For me, a memoir is nonfiction and nonfiction has to be absolutely true.
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