Fiction basically is a form of gossip where you want to enter other people’s lives, the lives of people you don’t know, and you want to know what’s going to happen to them.
VIKRAM SETHIt’s not the gods But our own hearts We need to fear. The evil starts Against all odds Not there but here.
More Vikram Seth Quotes
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There are plenty of good Indian writers in English, and none of us feel we are carrying the burden of being a poster boy.
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Poetry, I think, intensifies the reader’s experience. If it’s a humorous facet of the story, poetry makes it more exuberant. If it’s a sad facet, poetry can make it more poignant.
VIKRAM SETH -
Revision has its own peculiar pleasures and its own peculiar frustrations. The ground rules are already established; the characters already exist. You don’t have to bring the characters to life, but you do have to make them more convincing.
VIKRAM SETH -
I spent many years of my life as an economist and demographer. I was finally distracted by writing my novels and poetry. I’m enormously happy that was the case. I feel that with writing I have found my metier.
VIKRAM SETH -
Those books of mine that are remunerative – I’m not talking about poetry here – take years to write, and I am never sure they’ll be successful. So writing is a risk in more senses than one.
VIKRAM SETH -
Music, such music, is a sufficient gift. Why ask for happiness; why hope not to grieve? It is enough, it is to be blessed enough, to live from day to day and to hear such music-not too much, or the soul could not sustain it-from time to time.
VIKRAM SETH -
I want my books to sell, to be read. I’m not interested in being obscure.
VIKRAM SETH -
I don’t think people give Indian society enough credit. We may not like to talk much about things but we do, basically, want to live and let live.
VIKRAM SETH -
I just love music – by no stretch of the imagination am I professionally competent.
VIKRAM SETH -
So many Indian novels, quite unfairly, do not get the prominence they should because they have been written in a language other than English.
VIKRAM SETH -
Man without life companion is either god or beast.
VIKRAM SETH -
The thing about inspiration is that it takes your mind off everything else.
VIKRAM SETH -
In a painting, you can’t make out whether the artist painted the left eye before the right eye. In Chinese calligraphy, you can see the progression of the artist’s stroke.
VIKRAM SETH -
Is it not love that knows how to make smooth things rough and rough things smooth?
VIKRAM SETH -
Put your backbone where your wishbone is.
VIKRAM SETH