Vikram Seth Quotes
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Too many trees are killed to print the words of people who may not have all that much to say, and authors and journalists are equally culpable in this regard.
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Do not write if there is no tremendous urge to do so. At the heart, there must be an inspiration or muse or one of those old-fashioned things. Else, why bore yourself, destroy other people's interest and kill trees?
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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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After 'A Suitable Boy,' I didn't write anything, not even a short story. I thought to myself: 'I ought to start writing.' But I can never force myself to write.
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I am careful about fiction. A novel is not a tract or an essay. If I want to write about land reforms, or Hindu-Muslim relations, or position of women, I can do it as it affects my characters as in 'A Suitable Boy.' I could only write about issues specifically through essays. But I'll do that only if I have something worthwhile to say.
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Of course, I have to consider that I've written a lot of prose, but I do in my heart think of myself as being originally, and still primarily, a poet.
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I don't pick and choose subjects or settings; they pick and choose me.
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Basically, my mother couldn't hold a tune and when I was a baby, a rather tactless baby, I would ask her not to sing... you can't get to sleep if someone is singing off key nearby.
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I have a reputation for being hermitlike. I'm not. I'm just obsessed with my work.
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I think it's possible to be multi-rooted, rather like a banyan tree, without being deracinated.
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If somebody writes clearly, you can pretty much tell immediately if something is shallow or deep, whereas if they write with all this duckweed on the surface, you can't tell if the stream is one inch deep or a hundred fathoms.
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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 often feel newspapers are just filling up space. Of course, I also know people who write really long books.
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The fact is that at different stages of your life, and under the influence of different inspirations, you write different things. The point is not necessarily to find your voice, which grinds out the same sort of thing again and again, but to find a vehicle for people who are far more important than the author: the characters.
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My main motivation is not to get bored. I'm just hoping I get a vaguely maverick reputation.
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I think goodness is about how person behaves to person, and also person to world, to nature.
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Some men like Jack and some like JillI'm glad I like them both but stillI wonder if this freewheelingReally is an enlightened thing,Or is its greater scope a signOf deviance from some party line?In the strict ranks of Gay and StraightWhat is my status: Stray? Or Great?
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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.
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The point really is that a writer tends to write a book that he or she tends to write. It's as simple as that. Of course, it's important to make a living and all that, but the main impulse as far as I'm concerned - and I'm sure as other writers are concerned - is to tell a story that I feel impelled by.
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In general, questions are fine; you can always seize upon the parts of them that interest you and concentrate on answering those. And one has to remember when answering questions that asking questions isn't easy either, and for someone who's quite shy to stand up in an audience to speak takes some courage.
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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.
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You get your inspiration - suggestions - wherever you have to, even from your mother.
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Of course, a law that is selectively used is in one aspect even worse than a law that is generally used because it puts a lot of power in individuals' hands and makes government a rule, not of laws, but of people.
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You can talk good ideas out of existence.