Vikram Seth Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Is it not love that knows how to make smooth things rough and rough things smooth?

  Vikram Seth

  Smooth, Rough, Knows

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  Past, Thinking, Important

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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

  Book, Strive, Admirer

  17 Copy quote

• You can talk good ideas out of existence.

  Vikram Seth

  Ideas, Existence, Good Ideas

  4 Copy quote

• I need my natural laziness to be counteracted by obsession in order to do anything.

  Vikram Seth

  Order, Needs, Laziness

  "Togetherness, once removed". Interview with Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. September 10, 2005.

  6 Copy quote

• In spite of all temptations of belonging to many nations, I've remained an Indian.

  Vikram Seth

  Temptation, Spite, Indian

  4 Copy quote

• Of course, the greater one's need, the greater one's propensity to be mesmerized.

  Vikram Seth

  Needs, Propensity, Courses

  Vikram Seth (1993). “A Suitable Boy”, p.609, Penguin Books India

  4 Copy quote

• I don't pick and choose subjects or settings; they pick and choose me.

  Vikram Seth

  Choose Me, Subjects, Settings

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Vikram Seth

  Thinking, People, Giving

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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

  Book, Reading, Rooms

  Vikram Seth (2015). “Collected Poems”, p.447, Hachette UK

  4 Copy quote

• I recall drinking sherry in California and dreaming of England, where I ate dalmoth and dreamed of Delhi. What is the purpose, I wonder, of all this restlessness? I sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias.

  Vikram Seth

  Dream, Drinking, California

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Kind, Checks, Force

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Character, Frustration, Peculiar

  4 Copy quote

• I have a reputation for being hermitlike. I'm not. I'm just obsessed with my work.

  Vikram Seth

  Reputation, Obsessed

  6 Copy quote

• I just love music - by no stretch of the imagination am I professionally competent.

  Vikram Seth

  Imagination, Music Love, Competent

  6 Copy quote

• So many Indian novels, quite unfairly, do not get the prominence they should because they have been written in a language other than English.

  Vikram Seth

  Language, Should, Novel

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• Good music is good music, but it has to be good.

  Vikram Seth

  Music Is, Be Good

  6 Copy quote

• I often feel newspapers are just filling up space. Of course, I also know people who write really long books.

  Vikram Seth

  Book, Writing, Filling Up

  6 Copy quote

• I don't think anyone should be banned. If you don't like a book, set it aside.

  Vikram Seth

  Book, Thinking, Should

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  Writing, Listening To Music, Bother

  6 Copy 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

  Eye, Artist, Chinese

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Matter, Way, Ears

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Book, Writing, Successful

  4 Copy quote

• There are plenty of good Indian writers in English, and none of us feel we are carrying the burden of being a poster boy.

  Vikram Seth

  Boys, Posters, Burden

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• I want my books to sell, to be read. I'm not interested in being obscure.

  Vikram Seth

  Book, Want, Obscure

  4 Copy quote

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