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 SETHFiction 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.
More Vikram Seth Quotes
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Is it not love that knows how to make smooth things rough and rough things smooth?
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I want my books to sell, to be read. I’m not interested in being obscure.
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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.
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Quietly they moved down the calm and sacred river that had come down to earth so that its waters might flow over the ashes of those long dead, and that would continue to flow long after the human race had, through hatred and knowledge, burned itself out.
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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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In life’s brief game to be a winner A man must have; oh yes, above All else, of course, someone to love.
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What is the difference between my life and my love? One gets me low, the other lets me go.
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.
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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.
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The thing about inspiration is that it takes your mind off everything else.
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It is exciting to write about the present once one gets beyond the trivia of the moment. As a time to live in, as a time to think about, the present is intriguing.
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Don’t put things off till it’s too late. You are the DJ of your fate.
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I need my natural laziness to be counteracted by obsession in order to do anything.
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Good books get praised, bad books get praised. Good books get ignored, bad books get ignored.
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God save us from people who mean well.
VIKRAM SETH






