It is hard to write about physically difficult things without causing the reader to disengage.
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.
More Akhil Sharma Quotes
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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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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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We all become afraid. We all look at others and think these other people are more fortunate than us.
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Sandeep Jauhar gives us an insider’s look at the medical profession and also a dramatic account of the psychological challenges of early adulthood.
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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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The monsoon is such a dominant part of Indian life that it is hard to overstate its importance.
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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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Seven years into writing a novel, I started to lose my mind.
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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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The babies have old souls and the old souls have to shrink to become little babies.
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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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My parents are deeply pious Hindus.
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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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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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The little babies are missing their families from their past lives.
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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 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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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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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 memoir is nonfiction and nonfiction has to be absolutely true.
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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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Exposition suggests a great trust in the reader, and this expression of trust makes a book feel tender.
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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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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.
AKHIL SHARMA