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For a writer, obsession is a good substitute for self-discipline.

Vikram Seth

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Vikram Seth
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: June 20
Librettist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Calcutta
Discipline
Writer
Self
Good
Substitute
Substitutes
Obsession

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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You can talk good ideas out of existence.
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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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To not be able to love the one you love is to have your life wrenched away.
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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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Is it not love that knows how to make smooth things rough and rough things smooth?
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Don't put things off till it's too late. You are the DJ of your fate.
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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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Boredom provides a stronger inclination to write than 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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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.
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I certainly think its very important that writers as citizens - not necessarily as writers, but just as ordinary citizens - should talk about things that matter to them.
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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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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.
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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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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.
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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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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 want my books to sell, to be read. I'm not interested in being obscure.
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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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