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I don't pick and choose subjects or settings they pick and choose me.

Vikram Seth

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Vikram Seth
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: June 20
Librettist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Calcutta
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More quotes by Vikram Seth

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I rarely listen to music while writing. If I don't like it, it bothers me, and if I like it, it absorbs me so much I can't write.
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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For a writer, obsession is a good substitute for self-discipline.
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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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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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
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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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I sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias.
Vikram Seth
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To not be able to love the one you love is to have your life wrenched away.
Vikram Seth
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Put your backbone where your wishbone is.
Vikram Seth
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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.
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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You know, I can imagine not writing a novel and writing poetry only.
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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I just love music - by no stretch of the imagination am I professionally competent.
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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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.
Vikram Seth
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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
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My eyes close. I am here and not here. A waking nap? A flight to the end of the galaxy and perhaps a couple of billion light-years beyond?
Vikram Seth
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Every object strives for its proper place. A book seeks to be near its truest admirer. Just as this helpless moth seeks to be near the candle that infatuates him.
Vikram Seth