Vikram Seth Quotes

Sometimes I write with music on, and if I'm in a good flow, I don't even hear it.

I think we've all been in the middle of doing something we cared about, when someone coming in the room and saying 'hello' was annoying. I personally can understand that, as someone who tries to create.

I work best inundated with things, when it's like raining information.

All my writing is fun, and that makes it hard to slow down or walk away.

That's what I'm always searching for - finding the balance between not caring so much to where I put all this pressure on myself. But still caring enough to where it pushes me to work exactly how I've been working so far.

Luckily, my creative juices are pretty much on tap. If I'm compelled to do something, I can go for it and get it done.

I think we all have moments when we struggle with motivation.

Once we start shooting, it's in there. You're trying to get into a place where you rise to the work, rather than make it manageable or make it work for you.

Motivation is like love and happiness. It's a by-product. When you're actively engaged in doing something, it sneaks up and zaps you when you least expect it.

The how-to is all about day in, day out finding a way to feed the monster, the drive that lives inside.

Writing is about hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then unhypnotizing yourself and going over the material coldly.

...clatter of a typwriter suggests that you're actually building something.

He who saddens at thought of idleness cannot be idle, / And he's awake who thinks himself asleep.

Basically when I'm walking I'm not consciously writing or intending anything. In the manner I have learned from meditation practice, I let things unfold.

You are truly focused when you're so focused that you don't know you're focused.

But what I didn't recognize when I was much younger was this sort of...when you're on, when you're really on, go at it.

Writing is a deep-sea dive. You need hours just to get into it: down, down, down. If you're called back to the surface every couple of minutes by an email, you can't ever get back down. I have a great friend who became a Twitterer and he says he hasn't written anything for a year.

When people are inspired, they don't need motivation.

Inspiration is being motivated by a person or idea. Motivation is being inspired by an object. When people are inspired, they don't need motivation.

I work when I feel like I can do something that pleases me, that I think I can give a little more than I've given up to yesterday.

An author who waits for the right 'mood' will soon find that 'moods' get fewer and fewer until they cease altogether.

Motivation means we have an idea and we are going to carry through on that idea. We work hard at it, and we are disciplined.

Never let anyone define what you are capable of by using parameters that don't apply to you. Inspiration is for amateurs, the rest of us just show up and get to work. Every great idea I've ever had grew out of work itself. Sign onto a process and see where it takes you. You don't have to invent the wheel everyday. Today you will do what you did yesterday, tomorrow you will do what you did today. Eventually, you will get somewhere.

I remember the few times that happened to me in writing, where you basically start writing and you look at the clock and six hours have gone by and you're, like, "Whoa! What the hell just happened?" And that piece ends up in the final product even though the final product is three years away. It doesn't get rewritten. It came out the right way. But that's happened to me so few times in my life.

I feel like personally I have more drive now than I did then probably because I care more and also because I've reached the mid-life point.