Sarnath Banerjee Quotes

• 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

  Museums, Cities, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  13 Copy quote

• 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

  Details Of Life, People, Events

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Order, Discipline, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Everything you draw is influenced. It's like yogurt. You need a little bit to start the next batch.

  Sarnath Banerjee

  Needs, Yogurt, Littles

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  20 Copy quote

• 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

  Fashion, Crazy, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Character, People, Interesting

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Mean, Years, Class

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Patriotic, Class, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  People, Trying, Principles

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Challenges, Mind, Want

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Past, Ideas, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Knowing, Essence, Giving

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Way, Annoying, Truth Is

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Dream, Book, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Running, Writing, Views

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Book, Artist, Bridges

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Book, India, Archives

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Nice, Book, Writing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

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