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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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Vikram Seth
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: June 20
Librettist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Calcutta
Basically
Things
Ears
Poetry
Along
Learn
Iambic
Stanza
Comes
Constitutes
Matter
Naturally
Way

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Put your backbone where your wishbone is.
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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.
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To not be able to love the one you love is to have your life wrenched away.
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I think it's possible to be multi-rooted, rather like a banyan tree, without being deracinated.
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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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I am certainly not allergic to causes - particularly on subjects such as religious intolerance.
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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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It's not the gods But our own hearts We need to fear. The evil starts Against all odds Not there but here.
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I often feel newspapers are just filling up space. Of course, I also know people who write really long books.
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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.
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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?
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I need my natural laziness to be counteracted by obsession in order to do anything.
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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.
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You can talk good ideas out of existence.
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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.
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The thing about inspiration is that it takes your mind off everything else.
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Is it not love that knows how to make smooth things rough and rough things smooth?
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I'm not sure anyone can understand a whole life, even their own.
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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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I just love music - by no stretch of the imagination am I professionally competent.
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