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I just love music – by no stretch of the imagination am I professionally competent.

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

Character Establishment Existence Happiness Revision Yourself
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

Book Oneself Poetry Risk Success Talk Writing
Put your backbone where your wishbone is.
VIKRAM SETH

Dreams Inspirational Success Yourself
For a writer, obsession is a good substitute for self-discipline.
VIKRAM SETH

Discipline Obsession Substitute Writing
I simply seem to drift. But I sort of allow the drift, because it has a kind of check – it forces me to work harder at what I’m interested in.
VIKRAM SETH

Force Hard Interest Kind Myself Simplicity Work
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

Enough Live Myself People Talk Thinking
I think goodness is about how person behaves to person, and also person to world, to nature.
VIKRAM SETH

Goodness Myself Nature Person Thinking World
You know, I can imagine not writing a novel and writing poetry only.
VIKRAM SETH

Imagination Myself Novel Poetry Writing
Quietly they moved down the calm and sacred river that had come down to earth so that its waters might flow over the ashes of those long dead, and that would continue to flow long after the human race had, through hatred and knowledge, burned itself out.
VIKRAM SETH

Burn Calm Earth Flow Hate Human Knowledge Quiet Race River
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

English Language Novel Writing
And an equation is the same whether it’s written in red or green ink.
VIKRAM SETH

Equation Ink Writing
God save us from people who mean well.
VIKRAM SETH

God People Protection
The thing about inspiration is that it takes your mind off everything else.
VIKRAM SETH

Inspirational Mindset Yourself
It is exciting to write about the present once one gets beyond the trivia of the moment. As a time to live in, as a time to think about, the present is intriguing.
VIKRAM SETH

Beyond Excitement Intrigue Live Present Time
The past is the past, and he can’t make amends, only hope that the gain will outlast the damage.
VIKRAM SETH

Change Damage Hope Past
I’m not sure anyone can understand a whole life, even their own.
VIKRAM SETH

Life Myself Understand

I just love music – by no stretch of the imagination am I professionally competent.

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I just love music – by no stretch of the imagination am I professionally competent.

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