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I don’t pick and choose subjects or settings; they pick and choose me.

Vikram Seth

I certainly think its very important that writers as citizens – not necessarily as writers, but just as ordinary citizens – should talk about things that matter to them.
VIKRAM SETH

Citizenship Important Myself Talk Thinking Writing
Of course, the greater one’s need, the greater one’s propensity to be mesmerized.
VIKRAM SETH

Greatness Mesmerize Need
And the process of reading is such a private one. I once came into a room where a friend of mine was reading one of my books, and he clicked his tongue impatiently and shooed me off.
VIKRAM SETH

Friendship Myself Patience Privacy Process Reading Room
I tend to follow a scattershot approach to reading a lot of very diverse subjects interest me, and I’m quite happy to read stuff on any of them.
VIKRAM SETH

Happiness Interest Myself Quite Subject
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
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

Distract Economics Feeling Happiness Life Myself Novel Writing
I don’t pick and choose subjects or settings; they pick and choose me.
VIKRAM SETH

Choice Myself
I have a reputation for being hermitlike. I’m not. I’m just obsessed with my work.
VIKRAM SETH

Myself Obesession Reputation Work
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
I’m not sure anyone can understand a whole life, even their own.
VIKRAM SETH

Life Myself Understand
You know, I can imagine not writing a novel and writing poetry only.
VIKRAM SETH

Imagination Myself Novel Poetry Writing
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 SETH

Fiction Gossip Live People Yourself
What is the difference between my life and my love? One gets me low, the other lets me go.
VIKRAM SETH

Difference Let Go Life Love Myself Relationship
Man without life companion is either god or beast.
VIKRAM SETH

God Life Man Partner
It’s not the gods But our own hearts We need to fear. The evil starts Against all odds Not there but here.
VIKRAM SETH

Evil Fear God Heart Need Start
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

I don’t pick and choose subjects or settings; they pick and choose me.

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I don’t pick and choose subjects or settings; they pick and choose me.

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Popular Authors

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