Yashvardhan Jain

‘I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved, all the cities I have visited.’

something I never think about when I write a novel or a story, which is mainly designed to interact with another person on an intimate scale, in the silence of their reading experience.

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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every single distraction you may point to as the reason you have not or cannot make your work is all the same thing—it’s always just your fear of what may or may not happen if you make your work.

She would wake at 2am and write until 6am before starting her shift, then she would go to a cafe when it finished at lunchtime and write all afternoon.

[I]n order to write a book, do a deed, paint a picture with some life in it, one has to be alive oneself. And so, unless you never want to progress, study is a matter of very secondary importance for you. Enjoy yourself as much as you can, have as many diversions as you can, and remember that what people demand in art nowadays is something very muc... See more

The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.1

Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.2

People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seekin... See more

Only a fool or an egomaniac would deny that chance shapes the vast majority of life. The time, place, culture, family, body, brain, and biochemistry we are born into, the people who cross our path, the accidents that befall us — these dwarf in consequence the sum total of our choices. Still, our choices are the points of light that flicker against ... See more