Vikram Seth Quotes

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

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

Put your backbone where your wishbone is.

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

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 think it's possible to be multi-rooted, rather like a banyan tree, without being deracinated.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

In life's brief game to be a winner A man must have...oh yes, above All else, of course, someone to love.

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

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

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

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

God save us from people who mean well.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

It's not the gods But our own hearts We need to fear. The evil starts Against all odds Not there but here.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

My eyes close. I am here and not here. A waking nap? A flight to the end of the galaxy and perhaps a couple of billion light-years beyond?

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.

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.

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

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.

You get your inspiration - suggestions - wherever you have to, even from your mother.

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

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 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.

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

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

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

You can talk good ideas out of existence.

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.

Boredom provides a stronger inclination to write than anything.