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 SETHThink of many things. Never place your happiness in one person’s power. Be just to yourself.
More Vikram Seth Quotes
-
-
God save us from people who mean well.
VIKRAM SETH -
Don’t put things off till it’s too late. You are the DJ of your fate.
VIKRAM SETH -
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 -
I have a reputation for being hermitlike. I’m not. I’m just obsessed with my work.
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 -
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 -
Is it not love that knows how to make smooth things rough and rough things smooth?
VIKRAM SETH -
Think of many things. Never place your happiness in one person’s power. Be just to yourself.
VIKRAM SETH -
I often feel newspapers are just filling up space. Of course, I also know people who write really long books.
VIKRAM SETH -
Of course, the greater one’s need, the greater one’s propensity to be mesmerized.
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 -
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 -
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 -
Put your backbone where your wishbone is.
VIKRAM SETH -
To not be able to love the one you love is to have your life wrenched away.
VIKRAM SETH