Quotes by Vikram Seth

“Well, what do you think? Avanti?""Avanti," cries everyone, and, after a few quick re-tunings of our instruments, and re-initialisings of our hearts, we enter the slow theme-and-variations movement....”

“God save us from people who mean well.”

“How rarely these few years, as work keeps up aloof,Or fares, or one thing or another,How we had days to spend under our parents' roof;Myself, my sister, and my brother.All five of us will die; to r...”

“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 d...”

“To steel yourself against mangoes showed a degree of iciness that was almost inhuman.”

“Wherever his faltering mind,unsteadily wanders,he should restrain itand bring it under self-controlKrishna, the mind is faltering,violent, strong, and stubborn; I find it as difficultto hold as the...”

“I've always felt that the performance of a raag resembles a novel - or at least the kind of novel I'm attempting to write. You know,' he continued, extemporizing as he went along, 'first you take o...”

“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 d...”

“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 d...”

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

“I walk across the park to her flat. It is over-heated and there is a great deal of pink. This used not to unnerve me. Now when I step into the bathroom I recoil.Pink bath, pink basin, pink toilet, ...”

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

“And you spend your day going around from the house of the washerman to the house of the sweeper, asking about this one's son and that one's nephew, but spending no time with your own family. It is ...”

“She had dispersed. She was the garden at Prem Nivas (soon to be entered into the annual Flower Show), she was Veena's love of music, Pran's asthma, Maan's generosity, the survival of some refugees ...”

“And sometimes both of them forgot that what they were undergoing amid the clink of cutlery and crockery was a mutual interview that might decide whether or not they would own a common set of those ...”

“You can't blame her,' said Amit. 'After a life so full of tragedy anyone would become hard.''What tragedy?' asked Mrs. Chatterji.'Well, when she was four,' said Amit, 'her mother slapped her--it wa...”

“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.”

“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 questi...”

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

“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 foun...”