Vikram Seth Quotes
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Good music is good music, but it has to be good.
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The thing about inspiration is that it takes your mind off everything else.
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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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When I realised that I had feelings for men as well as women, at first I was worried and frightened, and there was a certain amount of 'Who am I? Am I a criminal?' and so on. It took me a long time to come to terms with myself. Those were painful years - painful then and painful to look back on.
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I want my books to sell, to be read. I'm not interested in being obscure.
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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.
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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.
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I know from an editor's point of view or a publisher's point of view it's easier to slot me into a particular niche. But I know that I'd be bored unless I wrote a book that in some senses was a challenge.
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In spite of all temptations of belonging to many nations, I've remained an Indian.
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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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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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If I'm compelled to do something, I don't shy away from it simply because I haven't tackled it before.
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I don't read as much as people may expect. In fact, sometimes I feel that I should probably read more, but then I do believe that one of the big problems of our times is that there's too much reading and not enough thinking.
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On the whole, I don't like reading long books. I'm not a fan of 'Ulysses.' And I haven't quite finished 'War and Peace.'
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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.
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Everyone sort of sees his own life and times as being ephemeral. One thinks that everything good or important that happened, happened in the past. But I think that seeing scenes that you are used to, but with the heightening effects of poetry, perhaps makes you value your life and times more than you might otherwise do.
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The trick to being a novelist is to act like an iceberg. Make it seem as if you're displaying only one-tenth of what you know, and the other nine-tenths isn't visible and never mind if that part is pure styrofoam!
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I need my natural laziness to be counteracted by obsession in order to do anything.
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I am certainly not allergic to causes - particularly on subjects such as religious intolerance.
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You know, I can imagine not writing a novel and writing poetry only.
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I love speculating about solutions to problems in mathematics. I have no interest whatever in sudoku. But I do look at chess and bridge problems in newspapers. I find that relaxing.
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I don't think anyone should be banned. If you don't like a book, set it aside.
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Dear though the reader might be, I'd be silly to cater to what the reader wanted.
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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.