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Ernest Hemingway has been the most important influence on me as a writer. But at a certain point as a writer, I realized that he was writing about good people doing good things. This did not match my experience of life and so I found my sentences stretching and becoming less plain.

Akhil Sharma

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Akhil Sharma
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: July 22
Author
Novelist
National Capital Region of Delhi
Life
Less
Plain
People
Experience
Match
Found
Sentences
Certain
Realized
Important
Writer
Writing
Becoming
Ernest
Good
Influence
Hemingway
Things
Point
Stretching

More quotes by Akhil Sharma

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Why do people always think hurting others is all right, as long as they hurt themselves as well?
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As a teacher, I can help my students see what is working and not working. I can show them certain solutions. I can guide them to books that will serve as role models. Largely, though, one learns to write almost like developing muscle memory, and this requires years of effort.
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I need to tell the things that are important but which don't make sense in terms of the narrative, things that would destroy symmetry or narrative pace. This is my personal belief about what it means to write nonfiction.
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For me, a lot of the humor comes not from innocence but from characters trying to figure out how to get what they need. I don't try to be funny, but am relieved when an opportunity comes up for humor.
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My parents are deeply pious Hindus.
Akhil Sharma
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It is hard to create a first-person narrator that can be a child and yet is able to take in enough information for the narrative to be legible to the reader.
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The little babies are missing their families from their past lives. The babies have old souls and the old souls have to shrink to become little babies. The tears loosen their memories so they can slide away. They cry at the life they have lost, and then they cry at everything they'll forget.
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For me, a memoir is nonfiction and nonfiction has to be absolutely true.
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I can't have composite characters. I can't attribute dialogue to someone based simply on my memory and not based on notes taken at the time that the words were spoken.
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Intern will resonate not only with doctors, but with anyone who has struggled with the grand question 'What should I do with my life?' In a voice of profound honesty and intelligence, Sandeep Jauhar gives us an insider's look at the medical profession and also a dramatic account of the psychological challenges of early adulthood.
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People often need to describe things quickly and so they use a shorthand. The problem is that after they use a label, they begin to think only in terms of the label instead of the totality of the experience a novel provides.
Akhil Sharma
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It's easy when you grow up in fear to act out of fear. I don't want to embrace that fear I prefer to be kind.
Akhil Sharma
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The monsoon is such a dominant part of Indian life that it is hard to overstate its importance. One's life completely changes based on the rain. After the monsoon, because the dust settles, one can see further and so it feels like one's eyesight has improved or that one is living in a different country where there is more light.
Akhil Sharma
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Seven years into writing a novel, I started to lose my mind. My thirty-seventh birthday had just come and gone, the end of 2008 was approaching, and I was constantly aware of how little I had managed to accomplish.
Akhil Sharma
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It is hard to write about physically difficult things without causing the reader to disengage.
Akhil Sharma
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Novels should be judged rigorously. Either a book works or it doesn't. The fact that something is true in the real world should not lend authority to it in fiction.
Akhil Sharma
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Certainly the details of our life are unique. Spending time thinking of how I am different from someone else, however, does not tend to be very productive.
Akhil Sharma
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Exposition suggests a great trust in the reader, and this expression of trust makes a book feel tender.
Akhil Sharma
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To me exposition always contains tenderness. While a dramatized scene is a way of proving and guaranteeing an emotional experience for the reader, exposition assumes that the reader is sophisticated and can see the universal.
Akhil Sharma
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As a human being living one's life, one is more open to relief when there is rain or the expectation of rain. That readiness for hope gets manifested in my stories and that of many other Indian writers.
Akhil Sharma