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 SETHI don’t pick and choose subjects or settings; they pick and choose me.
More Vikram Seth Quotes
-
-
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 -
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 -
God save us from people who mean well.
VIKRAM SETH -
I rarely listen to music while writing. If I don’t like it, it bothers me, and if I like it, it absorbs me so much I can’t write.
VIKRAM SETH -
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 -
Man without life companion is either god or beast.
VIKRAM SETH -
Dear though the reader might be, I’d be silly to cater to what the reader wanted.
VIKRAM SETH -
I think if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. And worth thinking about it as well.
VIKRAM SETH -
And an equation is the same whether it’s written in red or green ink.
VIKRAM SETH -
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 -
You will get what you want but you must want it and not just wish it.
VIKRAM SETH -
I am certainly not allergic to causes – particularly on subjects such as religious intolerance.
VIKRAM SETH -
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 -
You have to learn a few things, which you do along the way, but basically, poetry is a matter of the ear. Iambic pentameters or what constitutes a stanza comes naturally – your ears will know.
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 -
Every object strives for its proper place. A book seeks to be near its truest admirer. Just as this helpless moth seeks to be near the candle that infatuates him.
VIKRAM SETH -
There are plenty of good Indian writers in English, and none of us feel we are carrying the burden of being a poster boy.
VIKRAM SETH -
All you who sleep tonight Far from the ones you love, No hand to left or right, An emptiness above– Know that you aren’t alone. The whole world shares your tears, Some for two nights or one, And some for all your years.
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 -
Of course, the greater one’s need, the greater one’s propensity to be mesmerized.
VIKRAM SETH -
I need my natural laziness to be counteracted by obsession in order to do anything.
VIKRAM SETH -
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 -
To not be able to love the one you love is to have your life wrenched away.
VIKRAM SETH -
Put your backbone where your wishbone is.
VIKRAM SETH -
God save us from people who mean well.
VIKRAM SETH