A Quote by Vikram Seth

I often feel newspapers are just filling up space. Of course, I also know people who write really long books. — © Vikram Seth
I often feel newspapers are just filling up space. Of course, I also know people who write really long books.
Of course some people manage to write books really young and publish really young. But for most writers, it takes several years because you have to apprentice yourself to the craft, and you also have to grow up. I think maturity is connected to one's ability to write well.
It is false to speak of realization. What is there to realize? The real is as it is always. We are not creating anything new or achieving something which we did not have before. The illustration given in books is this. We dig a well and create a huge pit. The space in the pit or well has not been created by us. We have just removed the earth which was filling the space there. The space was there then and is also there now. Similarly we have simply to throw out all the age-long sanskaras [innate tendencies] which are inside us. When all of them have been given up, the Self will shine alone.
It's amazing - you know, you just look up, and you say, 'Wow, that's amazing.' It's 25,000 people only on one side, so of course you enjoy it. Every time when you go on the pitch, it's just crazy. They know when we need some energy; they have a button, so it's perfect. But you feel it; you feel it, of course.
With newspapers cutting foreign bureaus and budgets shrinking for long-form, investigative journalism, documentary filmmakers are often filling a void nowadays in the media landscape with their ability to spend time with their stories and subjects.
We dig a well and create a huge pit. The space in the pit or well has not been created by us. We have just removed the earth which was filling the space there. The space was there then and is also there now.
I tend not to write books that are really, really long, and I'm also a pretty fast writer.
It bothers me when people, say, you know, write for, you know, a web publication and get paid little or nothing or, you know, expecting to, like, read the best newspapers in the world and not pay a cent for it. Those newspapers need money in order to operate.
You don't want to spend your time around people who make you hold your breath. You can't fill up when you're holding your breath. And writing is about filling up, filling up when you are empty, letting images and ideas and smells run down like water - just as writing is also about dealing with the emptiness.
Young men, especially in America, write to me and ask me to recommend “a course of reading.” Distrust a course of reading! People who really care for books read all of them. There is no other course.
Make no mistake, those who write long books have nothing to say. Of course those who write short books have even less to say.
Blogging has mostly been an opportunity to react more immediately to experiences to try out ideas that I may end up using in the print media or in some other place. When I write books, it's a way for me to bring readers into the experience of writing the book, all through the process of writing the books that I write. I talk about what I'm up to in the blog. I let people know what I am doing. To me, it's just part of putting my professional life up in a way that people who are interested in it can access; and learning things from them as well.
For such a long time, when you're a writer, you really are just writing for yourself, and maybe a few friends. So it's really amazing when your book gets out there and more people are reading and responding to it. It really makes the world of the books feel real.
The blank space can be humbling. But I've faced it my whole professional life. It's my job. It's also my calling. Bottom line: Filling this empty space constitutes my identity.
I feel like they are two different things, and when I write books, they're just books. If they can be movies that's okay. But I would write a novel that couldn't be a film.
The most important thing for a writer to do is to write. It really doesn't matter what you write as long as you are able to write fluidly, very quickly, very effortlessly. It needs to become not second nature but really first nature to you. And read; you need to read and you need to read excellent books and then some bad books. Not as many bad books, but some bad books, so that you can see what both look like and why both are what they are.
Love is the reason I just keep filling up my little eyedropper, keep filling it up and emptying my ocean one drop at a time. I’m not here to eliminate poverty, to eradicate disease, to put a stop to people abandoning babies. I’m just here to love.
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