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.
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.
More Akhil Sharma Quotes
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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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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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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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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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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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My parents are deeply pious Hindus.
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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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Why do people always think hurting others is all right, as long as they hurt themselves as well?
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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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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.
AKHIL SHARMA -
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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For me, a memoir is nonfiction and nonfiction has to be absolutely true.
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When someone gets a success, and we, too, have done good work and sometimes even better work than the person who has just triumphed, we wonder: Why did success pass me by?
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Even within my stories, people hold opposing views.
AKHIL SHARMA