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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.

Vikram Seth

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Vikram Seth
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: June 20
Librettist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Calcutta
People
Enter
Basically
Fiction
Happen
Lives
Happens
Form
Going
Gossip

More quotes by Vikram Seth

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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.
Vikram Seth
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Dear though the reader might be, I'd be silly to cater to what the reader wanted.
Vikram Seth
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It's not the gods But our own hearts We need to fear. The evil starts Against all odds Not there but here.
Vikram Seth
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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.
Vikram Seth
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I recall drinking sherry in California and dreaming of England, where I ate dalmoth and dreamed of Delhi. What is the purpose, I wonder, of all this restlessness? I sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias.
Vikram Seth
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I want my books to sell, to be read. I'm not interested in being obscure.
Vikram Seth
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Why do writers, say, give up a job in economics and decide to write poetry? Or, why do they give up a job in a bank and decide to paint, like Krishan Khanna? They want to convey something.
Vikram Seth
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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.
Vikram Seth
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Is it not love that knows how to make smooth things rough and rough things smooth?
Vikram Seth
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I often feel newspapers are just filling up space. Of course, I also know people who write really long books.
Vikram Seth
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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.
Vikram Seth
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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.
Vikram Seth
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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.
Vikram Seth
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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.
Vikram Seth
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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
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I think it's possible to be multi-rooted, rather like a banyan tree, without being deracinated.
Vikram Seth
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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
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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.
Vikram Seth
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Think of many things. Never place your happiness in one person's power. Be just to yourself.
Vikram Seth
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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.
Vikram Seth