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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.

Vikram Seth

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Vikram Seth
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: June 20
Librettist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Calcutta
Force
Checks
Seems
Forces
Work
Allow
Kind
Harder
Interested
Seem
Simply
Drift
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More quotes by 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'm not sure anyone can understand a whole life, even their own.
Vikram Seth
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All you who sleep tonight Far from the ones you love, No hand to left or right, An emptiness above-- Know that you aren't alone. The whole world shares your tears, Some for two nights or one, And some for all your years.
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Of course, the greater one's need, the greater one's propensity to be mesmerized.
Vikram Seth
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Boredom provides a stronger inclination to write than anything.
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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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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Is it not love that knows how to make smooth things rough and rough things smooth?
Vikram Seth
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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.
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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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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I don't pick and choose subjects or settings they pick and choose me.
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 sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias.
Vikram Seth
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In a painting, you can't make out whether the artist painted the left eye before the right eye. In Chinese calligraphy, you can see the progression of the artist's stroke.
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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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 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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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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I often feel newspapers are just filling up space. Of course, I also know people who write really long books.
Vikram Seth