Vikram Seth Quotes

Put your backbone where your wishbone is.

Don't put things off till it's too late. You are the DJ of your fate.

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.

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.

And an equation is the same whether it's written in red or green ink

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.

What is the difference between my life and my love? One gets me low, the other lets me go.

I am certainly not allergic to causes - particularly on subjects such as religious intolerance.

Poetry, I think, intensifies the reader's experience.

If it's a humorous facet of the story, poetry makes it more exuberant. If it's a sad facet, poetry can make it more poignant.

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

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.

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

I often feel newspapers are just filling up space.

Of course, I also know people who write really long books.

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

It's not the gods But our own hearts We need to fear.

The evil starts Against all odds Not there but here.

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

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.

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

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

The thing about inspiration is that it takes your mind off everything else.

I'm not sure anyone can understand a whole life, even their own.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Dear though the reader might be, I'd be silly to cater to what the reader wanted.

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.

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.

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

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.

I sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias.

To not be able to love the one you love is to have your life wrenched away.

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.

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

I think goodness is about how person behaves to person, and also person to world, to nature.

I think if something is worth doing, it's worth doing well. And worth thinking about it as well.

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.

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

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.

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.

God save us from people who mean well.

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.

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.

Boredom provides a stronger inclination to write than anything.

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.

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

All over India, all over the world, as the sun or the shadow of darkness moves from east to west, the call to prayer moves with it, and people kneel down in a wave to pray to God. Five waves each day - one for each namaaz - ripple across the globe from longitude to longitude. The component elements change direction, like iron filings near a magnet - towards the house of God in Mecca.

Think of many things. Never place your happiness in one person's power. Be just to yourself.