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 SETHFor a writer, obsession is a good substitute for self-discipline.
More Vikram Seth Quotes
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Boredom provides a stronger inclination to write than anything.
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I am certainly not allergic to causes – particularly on subjects such as religious intolerance.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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So many Indian novels, quite unfairly, do not get the prominence they should because they have been written in a language other than English.
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For a writer, obsession is a good substitute for self-discipline.
VIKRAM SETH -
My eyes close. I am here and not here. A waking nap? A flight to the end of the galaxy and perhaps a couple of billion light-years beyond?
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The thing about inspiration is that it takes your mind off everything else.
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You will get what you want but you must want it and not just wish it.
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God save us from people who mean well.
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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.
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You can talk good ideas out of existence.
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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 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