Yashvardhan Jain

Françoise Sagan’s Paris Review interview is worth reading in its entirety. I especially enjoyed this exchange:

Is it possible that novels get written because the novelist imagines himself in the role of a novelist writing a novel?

No, one assumes the role of hero and then seeks out “the novelist” who can write his story.

And one always finds the sam

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Your ambition is not to write the Great American Novel. Your ambition is to finish the damn book. This is a lesson I’ve had to learn over and over again. It’s true of so many things in our lives. Because we’re afraid of failing, sometimes we turn away from it and don’t do it at all. As much as it would have hurt to write a book that everyone hated,... See more

So don’t study and grind away too much, for that makes one sterile. Enjoy yourself too much rather than too little, and don’t take art and love too seriously—there is very little one can do about it, it is mainly a question of temperament.

The longer you live abroad, the more you realize you’ll always be a bit of an outsider, no matter where you are.

No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life. There may be countless trails and bridges and demigods who would gladly carry you across; but only at the price of pawning and forgoing yourself. There is one path in the world that none can walk but you. Where does it lead? Don’t ask, walk!

Said this to a friend but it applies to many:

I think you have a good guess what you should be doing, and there is no need to overthink it. Just decided that for the next 3 months you will execute on your inkling. After that, you can evaluate if you want to try something different. Course correcting too often than eats your bandwidth.

Exa bite quoted... See more