The thing about inspiration is that it takes your mind off everything else.
Put your backbone where your wishbone is.
Don’t put things off till it’s too late. You are the DJ of your fate.
I think if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. And worth thinking about it as well.
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.
I’m not sure anyone can understand a whole life, even their own.
Music, such music, is a sufficient gift. Why ask for happiness; why hope not to grieve? It is enough, it is to be blessed enough, to live from day to day and to hear such music-not too much, or the soul could not sustain it-from time to time.
Think of many things. Never place your happiness in one person’s power. Be just to yourself.
You have to learn a few things, which you do along the way, but basically, poetry is a matter of the ear. Iambic pentameters or what constitutes a stanza comes naturally – your ears will know.
I have a reputation for being hermitlike. I’m not. I’m just obsessed with my work.
And an equation is the same whether it’s written in red or green ink.
Is it not love that knows how to make smooth things rough and rough things smooth?
For a writer, obsession is a good substitute for self-discipline.
I don’t think anyone should be banned. If you don’t like a book, set it aside.
So many Indian novels, quite unfairly, do not get the prominence they should because they have been written in a language other than English.
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.
I just love music – by no stretch of the imagination am I professionally competent.
I rarely listen to music while writing. If I don’t like it, it bothers me, and if I like it, it absorbs me so much I can’t write.
I need my natural laziness to be counteracted by obsession in order to do anything.
I often feel newspapers are just filling up space. Of course, I also know people who write really long books.