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You know, I can imagine not writing a novel and writing poetry only.

Vikram Seth

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Vikram Seth
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: June 20
Librettist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Calcutta
Novel
Imagine
Writing
Poetry

More quotes by 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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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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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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For a writer, obsession is a good substitute for self-discipline.
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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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 sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias.
Vikram Seth
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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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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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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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Good music is good music, but it has to be good.
Vikram Seth
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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.
Vikram Seth
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Boredom provides a stronger inclination to write than anything.
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
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I think if something is worth doing, it's worth doing well. And worth thinking about it as well.
Vikram Seth
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And an equation is the same whether it's written in red or green ink
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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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.
Vikram Seth
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In life's brief game to be a winner A man must have...oh yes, above All else, of course, someone to love.
Vikram Seth
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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