Vikram Seth Quotes
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What is the difference between my life and my love? One gets me low, the other lets me go.
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I just love music - by no stretch of the imagination am I professionally competent.
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I'm not sure anyone can understand a whole life, even their own.
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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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You get your inspiration - suggestions - wherever you have to, even from your mother.
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I have a reputation for being hermitlike. I'm not. I'm just obsessed with my work.
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But I too hate long books: the better, the worse. If they're bad they merely make me pant with the effort of holding them up for a few minutes. But if they're good, I turn into a social moron for days, refusing to go out of my room, scowling and growling at interruptions, ignoring weddings and funerals, and making enemies out of friends. I still bear the scars of Middlemarch.
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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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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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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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Dear though the reader might be, I'd be silly to cater to what the reader wanted.
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Is it not love that knows how to make smooth things rough and rough things smooth?
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Good music is good music, but it has to be good.
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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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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.
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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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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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You can talk good ideas out of existence.
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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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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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For a writer, obsession is a good substitute for self-discipline.
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And an equation is the same whether it's written in red or green ink
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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 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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I am certainly not allergic to causes - particularly on subjects such as religious intolerance.
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Think of many things. Never place your happiness in one person's power. Be just to yourself.
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You know, I can imagine not writing a novel and writing poetry only.
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I want my books to sell, to be read. I'm not interested in being obscure.
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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 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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