Quotes by Sarnath Banerjee - Page 1 | QuoteForever

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Everything you draw is influenced. It's like yogurt. You need a little bit to start the next batch.
Sarnath Banerjee / Novelist
Littles
Needs
Yogurt
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People are interested in relevant stories. In big events. But I'm not interested in big things; I'm interested in the smaller details of life.
Sarnath Banerjee / Novelist
Details Of Life
Events
People
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The only way one can display learning is by playing with it. Because the truth is that there's something embarrassing about displaying heavy knowledge. You feel sort of annoying.
Sarnath Banerjee / Novelist
Annoying
Truth Is
Way
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I'm not interested in, and not capable of, direct politics. What I can do - I try to figure out the underlying principles. I'm interested in the psychological forces that divide Indian people as a nation.
Sarnath Banerjee / Novelist
People
Principles
Trying
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What fiction does is bring you closer to the essence of truth, as opposed to simply giving you the truth. And there's no knowing truth. Truth seekers are all charlatans. You can only feel the truth of something.
Sarnath Banerjee / Novelist
Essence
Giving
Knowing
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People are infinitely more interesting than characters that I come up with. Because the characters I come up with are basically combinations of people I've met. Combinations. You select certain details, that's all.
Sarnath Banerjee / Novelist
Character
Interesting
People
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The most important part of a city is its people. In fact, people for me are like little cities. When you meet someone, it's like you've found a new city to explore. You take a tram, visit the museums and operas and cafes.
Sarnath Banerjee / Novelist
Cities
Museums
People
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India has sanctioned phenomenal injustices for years and years and years. And normalized it. There is no understanding of what it means to be born into a class that has been denied basic human dignity for generations and generations.
Sarnath Banerjee / Novelist
Class
Mean
Years
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Only a very specific kind of writer keeps their reader in mind while working. Such writers don't want to irk their readers; they don't want to challenge their readers; they want to produce exactly what their reader expects them to produce. I'm not like that.
Sarnath Banerjee / Novelist
Challenges
Mind
Want
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It's not my intention to be understood. I will continue writing for a readership that is fundamentally local. Because if you want to produce universal writing, you run the risk of losing your local knowledge. Your views are so universalist that the street aspect disappears.
Sarnath Banerjee / Novelist
Running
Views
Writing
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There are different reasons why people write: for themselves, or for other writers, or to get prizes, or keeping an audience in mind. In my case, it felt really nice that a certain type of readership read the book and liked it, even though my readership is not as wide as certain popular books.
Sarnath Banerjee / Novelist
Book
Nice
Writing
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My books serve as archives of thoughts and emotions, like a tonal history that captures how I felt at a certain time of my life. It's not very informational. You're not going to get comprehensive knowledge about the Han dynasty of China or about India's Emergency. But you might learn how one person felt about the Los Angeles Olympics.
Sarnath Banerjee / Novelist
Archives
Book
India
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I think it's really good not to get published. It sounds crazy but it's true. People want to get published very soon, but the moment that happens, you lose a bit of your originality. Once you publish, you are always doing things made-to-order. You stop being a weaver and become a tailor. You are tailoring things to suit other people's fashion.
Sarnath Banerjee / Novelist
Crazy
Fashion
Thinking
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I feel history is more of a story than a lesson. I know this idea of presentism: this idea of constantly evoking the past to justify the present moment. A lot of people will tell you, "history is how we got here." And learning from the lessons of history. But that's imperfect. If you learn from history you can do things for all the wrong reasons.
Sarnath Banerjee / Novelist
Ideas
Past
People
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As a non-western artist, you have to ask yourself a question fairly early in your life: do I want to become a bridge maker, do I want my culture to be understood by the west? I have no intentions of doing such things. I'm fine being a little strange to a non-western audience. It doesn't bother me if my book doesn't change a generation of American readers.
Sarnath Banerjee / Novelist
Artist
Book
Bridges
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I find it very difficult to relate to India's new middle class. This very patriotic and neoliberal group that mixes religion and economics together. I find them very irksome. Very difficult to like. They are privileged, but they don't want to talk about their privilege. It's difficult to find poetry amongst these people. Some sort of hidden spirit of beauty.
Sarnath Banerjee / Novelist
Class
Patriotic
People
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I want to make sense of things, to understand the world, but my work is never really instructional. I have no wisdom to impart or give, so I think my dream readers would be people who just use the book as an excuse to get into their own cycle of thoughts. The book is just like a map. It's just a jotting-down of things that you can interpret in your own ways.
Sarnath Banerjee / Novelist
Dream
Book
Thinking
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I'm interested in history because it's a discipline that requires a lot of effort from the imagination. You need to put in a lot of imaginative effort to figure out how people lived in an era that is not yours. And in that understanding of people from a different era, I feel, is an important gateway into humanity. Because you understand human behavior. In order to understand humanity, history is important.
Sarnath Banerjee / Novelist
Discipline
Order
People
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