Quotes by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala - Page 1 | QuoteForever

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India always changes people, and I have been no exception
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala / Novelist
Exception
India
People
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The misfortune to be born when I was, where I was. That was a piece of bad luck.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala / Novelist
Bad Luck
Born
Luck
Pieces
Misfortune
Piece
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Westernized Indians don't like my books and I tend not to like westernized Indians - so we're quits.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala / Novelist
Book
Quitting
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Perhaps I'm just fickle by nature and get tired of countries the way other women do of husbands or lovers.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala / Novelist
Fickle
Lovers
Tired
Husbands
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I was never interested in film. Never. I never even thought of it. I wasn't even a film buff, I didn't see many films ever.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala / Novelist
Buff
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I am a central European with an English education and a deplorable tendency to constant self-analysis. I am irritable and have weak nerves.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala / Novelist
Constant
Nerves
Weak
Central
Deplorable
European
Tendency
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I like characters who are larger-than-life, whether life-loving women or the artist or guru who grabs everything. But I don't live among people like that.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala / Novelist
Guru
Women People Live
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India was a sensation. It was remarkable to see all those parrots flying about, the brilliant foliage and the brilliant sky. It was a tremendous pageant. I never noticed the poverty.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala / Novelist
Brilliant
Flying
Pageant
Poverty
Remarkable
Sky
Tremendous
Noticed
Sensation
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England gave me a language and literature, the basis of what I am as a writer, but when I started writing more directly about my own experience, it wasn't England so much as what went before.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala / Novelist
Basis
Experience I Am Me
Experience Me I Am
Directly
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I am dissatisfied with everything I have ever written and regard it all only as a preparation for that one work which probably I don't have it in me to write but which I hope I can go on trying for.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala / Novelist
Preparation
Trying
Writing
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I'm not interested in who am I. I'm interested in what's gone, the disinheritance, what I've been able to become or learn or fuse with or not fuse with. A certain freedom comes... I like it that way.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala / Novelist
Fuse
Not Interested
Who Am I
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Film is not like a book; it's not a writer's baby at all. So many people have put in their talent, by that time that you feel grateful for what they've done, you don't feel possessive about it in any way.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala / Novelist
Baby
Book
Grateful
Possessive
Time Talent People
So Many People
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Everyone is so estranged; no one is rooted. That's what I like to write about more than anything else. Everything being so mixed up. Racially mixed up, people moving from place to place, everything shifting.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala / Novelist
Rooted
Shifting
Anything Else
Mixed
More Than Anything
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I never really had any close friends in India, and I felt a terrible loneliness and isolation for many years. Westernized Indians don't like my books and I tend not to like westernized Indians - so we're quits.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala / Novelist
Close Friends
Isolation
Loneliness
Terrible
Indians
Quits
Tend
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Once a refugee, always a refugee. I can't ever remember not being all right wherever I was, but you don't give your whole allegiance to a place or want to be entirely identified with the society you're living in.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala / Novelist
Society
Allegiance
Refugee
Remember
Always Your Remember
Living
Ever
Entirely
Give
Identified
Place
Wherever
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I stand before you as a writer without any ground of being out of which to write: really blown about from country to country, culture to culture till I feel - till I am - nothing. As it happens, I like it that way.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala / Novelist
Till
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I only really woke up in India. It was my first experience of plenty, strangely enough, because everything in England was rationed. I loved sweets, but you couldn't get them; then there was this marvelous mitthai - I went crazy.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala / Novelist
Marvelous
Plenty
Strangely
Sweets
Woke
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All my early books are written as if I were Indian. In England, I had started writing as if I were English; now I write as if I were American. You take other peoples backgrounds and characters; Keats called it negative capability.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala / Novelist
Book
Character
Writing
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All my early books are written as if I were Indian. In England, I had started writing as if I were English; now I write as if I were American. You take other people's backgrounds and characters; Keats called it negative capability.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala / Novelist
Backgrounds
Capability
England
Indian
Negative
Early
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The older books were quite light-hearted. But I think most of my novels do end on a deep note of pessimism. Shadows seem to be closing in. The final conclusion isn't that life is wonderful and everything is bright and cheery and in the garden.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala / Novelist
Book
Closing
Conclusion
Garden
Light Hearted
Pessimism
Thinking
Wonderful
Bright
Final
Older
Note
Seem
Shadows
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England opened up the world of literature for me. Not really having a world of my own, I made up for my disinheritance by absorbing the world of others... I loved them: George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens... I adopted them passionately.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala / Novelist
Adopted
Dickens
England
Hardy
Absorb
Charles
George
Opened
Passionately
Thomas
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It's technically extremely difficult to get down what you really mean, not what you think you mean, or what you think sounds good, but what's really there, what you really have to express, in words that somehow convey that meaning in an approximate way.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala / Novelist
Approximate
Convey
Technically
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I always find the first thing that really bothers me when I start a screenplay is, I have to find a different form. You can't follow the form of the novel. It's a different thing completely. It's impossible. You just somehow have to find a structure for the whole thing. You have to crack that.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala / Novelist
Impossible
Novel
Structure
Bothers
Crack
Different Thing
Me Start Always
First Thing
Follow
Screenplay
Somehow
The First Thing
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First, I was so dazzled and besotted by India. People said the poverty was biblical, and I'm afraid that was my attitude, too. It's terribly easy to get used to someone else's poverty if you're living a middle-class life in it. But after a while, I saw it wasn't possible to accept it, and I also didn't want to.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala / Novelist
Bible
Terribly
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Film, for me, is in two stages. One is when I write the script more or less on my own - that's the nice bit. And then comes for me the unpleasant bit when they all go off, 100 people - actors and camera people and film and sound - and I stay away. When they go into the editing room, I come in again, and that's the bit I like.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala / Novelist
Editing
Me People Own
Camera
Editing Room
More Or Less
Script
Stages
Unpleasant
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