Vikram Seth Quotes

19 Sourced Quotes

Some men like Jack and some like Jill
I'm glad I like them both but still
I wonder if this freewheeling
Really is an enlightened thing,
Or is its greater scope a sign
Of deviance from some party line?
In the strict ranks of Gay and Straight
What is my status: Stray? Or Great?

Vikram Seth
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 day - one for each namaaz - ripple across the globe from longitude to longitude. The component elements change direction, like iron filings near a magnet - towards the house of God in Mecca.

Vikram Seth
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.

Vikram Seth
And an equation is the same whether it's written in red or green ink

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

Vikram Seth
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?

Vikram Seth
Imagining the flower-pot attacked it
The kitten flung the violets near and far
And yet, who knows? This morning, as I backed it,
My car was set upon by a parked car.

Vikram Seth
Music is not a cheap spectacle – not the entertainment of the brothel. It is like prayer.

Vikram Seth
Quietly they moved down the calm and sacred river that had come down to earth so that its waters might flow over the ashes of those long dead, and that would continue to flow long after the human race had, through hatred and knowledge, burned itself out.

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

Vikram Seth
All you who sleep tonight Far from the ones you love, No hand to left or right, An emptiness above— Know that you aren't alone. The whole world shares your tears, Some for two nights or one, And some for all your years.

Vikram Seth
Strange to be a man and never grow big with child. To feel a part of you opening, and a part of you leaving, and howling as if it were not a part of you. Then it puts on a green cap and a grey suit and has friends.

Vikram Seth
If we cannot eschew hatred, at least let us eschew group hatred.

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

Vikram Seth
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.

Vikram Seth
Making music and making love – it's a bit too easy an equation.

Vikram Seth
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 days, refusing to go out of my room, scowling and growling at interruptions, ignoring weddings and funerals, and making enemies out of friends. I still bear the scars of Middlemarch.

Vikram Seth
Behind every door on every ordinary street, in every hut in every ordinary village in this middling planet of a trivial star, such riches are to be found. The strange journeys we undertake on our earthly pilgrimage, the joy and suffering we taste or confer, the chance events that leave us together or apart, what a complex trace they leave: so personal as to be almost incommunicable, so fugitive as to be almost irrecoverable.

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

Vikram Seth