"Is it not love that knows how to make smooth things rough and rough things smooth?"
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Quote collection
Vikram Seth quotes (page 2 of 4)
61 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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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"I don't think anyone should be banned. If you don't like a book, set it aside."
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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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"God save us from people who mean well."
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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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"I just love music - by no stretch of the imagination am I professionally competent."
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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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"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 often feel newspapers are just filling up space. Of course, I also know people who write really long books."
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"Good music is good music, but it has to be good."
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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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"I need my natural laziness to be counteracted by obsession in order to do anything."
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"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."
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"It's not the gods But our own hearts We need to fear. The evil starts Against all odds Not there but here."
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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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"You get your inspiration - suggestions - wherever you have to, even from your mother."
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"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?"
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"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."
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