Quote

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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Vikram Seth
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: June 20
Librettist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Calcutta
Make
Strokes
Chinese
Painting
Whether
Eye
Calligraphy
Artist
Stroke
Left
Progression
Right
Painted

More quotes by Vikram Seth

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I need my natural laziness to be counteracted by obsession in order to do anything.
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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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I think if something is worth doing, it's worth doing well. And worth thinking about it as well.
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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.
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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.
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Boredom provides a stronger inclination to write than anything.
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The thing about inspiration is that it takes your mind off everything else.
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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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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.
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Quietly they moved down the calm and sacred river that had come down to earth so that its waters might flow over the ashes of those long dead, and that would continue to flow long after the human race had, through hatred and knowledge, burned itself out.
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I sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias.
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You know, I can imagine not writing a novel and writing poetry only.
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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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Of course, the greater one's need, the greater one's propensity to be mesmerized.
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I don't think anyone should be banned. If you don't like a book, set it aside.
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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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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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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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I want my books to sell, to be read. I'm not interested in being obscure.
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I'm not sure anyone can understand a whole life, even their own.
Vikram Seth