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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
Matter
Constitutes
Way
Naturally
Things
Basically
Ears
Poetry
Along
Learn
Iambic
Comes
Stanza

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Good music is good music, but it has to be good.
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Dear though the reader might be, I'd be silly to cater to what the reader wanted.
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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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The thing about inspiration is that it takes your mind off everything else.
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Music, such music, is a sufficient gift. Why ask for happiness why hope not to grieve? It is enough, it is to be blessed enough, to live from day to day and to hear such music-not too much, or the soul could not sustain it-from time to time.
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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.
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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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I need my natural laziness to be counteracted by obsession in order to do anything.
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Boredom provides a stronger inclination to write than anything.
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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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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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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.
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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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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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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.
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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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I think it's possible to be multi-rooted, rather like a banyan tree, without being deracinated.
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And an equation is the same whether it's written in red or green ink
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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.
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You can talk good ideas out of existence.
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