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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

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 think if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. And worth thinking about it as well.
VIKRAM SETH

Action Myself Thinking Worth
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
You can talk good ideas out of existence.
VIKRAM SETH

Existence Goodness Ideas Talk Yourself
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

Listening Music Myself Poet Writing
God save us from people who mean well.
VIKRAM SETH

God People Protection
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
And an equation is the same whether it’s written in red or green ink.
VIKRAM SETH

Equation Ink Writing
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

Elegant Experience Face Poetry Reading Sad Story Thinking
You get your inspiration – suggestions – wherever you have to, even from your mother.
VIKRAM SETH

Inspirational Mom Yourself
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

Blessing Enough Gift Grief Happiness Hope Music Soul Time
Good books get praised, bad books get praised. Good books get ignored, bad books get ignored.
VIKRAM SETH

Book Goodness Ignorance Praise
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?
VIKRAM SETH

Beyond Couple End Eyes Light Wake Up
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
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 need my natural laziness to be counteracted by obsession in order to do anything.
VIKRAM SETH

Lazy Myself Natural Need Obsession Order

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Vikram Seth Quotes