Quotes from Vikram Seth

The ifs and buts of history...form an insubstantial if intoxicating diet.

Good books get praised, bad books get praised. Good books get ignored, bad books get ignored

In a clear brook With joyful haste The whimsical trout Shot past me like an arrow I play the line of the song, I play the leaps and plunges of the right hand of the piano, I am the trout, the angler, the brook, the observer.

The trick to being a novelist is to act like an iceberg. Make it seem as if you're displaying only one-tenth of what you know, and the other nine-tenths isn't visible and never mind if that part is pure styrofoam!

Put your backbone where your wishbone is.

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

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