Indian - Writer | March 17, 1963 -
Culture survives in smaller spaces - not in the history books that erect monuments to the nation's grand history but in cafes and cinema houses, village squares, and half-forgotten libraries.
Amitava Kumar
HistoryCultureCinemaVillageBooks
India allows you the luxury of a million inequalities. You can be a schoolboy selling tea to passengers sitting in a state transport bus, but you are royalty when compared to a shirtless, barefoot village boy, from what was traditionally considered an untouchable caste, living on snails and small fish - and sometimes rats.
TeaSmallFishRoyaltyLuxuryYou
Even fake news tries to convince us of its reality, but it does so mostly by appealing to your preconceived notions, your shared biases, or your prejudice. How to do the opposite? To create a sense of the real and then challenge your biases. I think that is my favourite aspect of writing, and that is what I've tried to do in 'The Lovers.'
ChallengeWritingThinkRealityFake
All good works of art must ask this question: 'You want to breathe free, yes, but do you know how to kiss?'
GoodArtKissFreeYouKnow
In the poetry of immigrants, nostalgia is as common as confetti at parades or platitudes at political conventions.
PoetryPoliticalNostalgiaImmigrants
In the way in which we are living in a much more explosive and more tension-filled society, a society that is driven with more and more contradictions, it is but unavoidable that some of this will also come into cinema. I would, in fact, argue that a part of it is borrowed from Hollywood. It's as if Quentin Tarantino has come to Mumbai.
SocietyCinemaLivingHollywoodWay
An essay is not an op-ed that tells its reader what to think. An essay is a complicated working-out of one's own contradictions and complicities.
ThinkComplicatedOwnEssayOp-Ed
The writer will write in his or her words, but the readers, even when they are not reading you, will take it elsewhere entirely.
WordsReadingYouWillWriteTake
I have to tell you, when I hear the song 'Jiya ho Bihar ke Lala,' I want to throw the history books out of the window and dance!
HistoryDanceWindowSongYouWant
The thing about good art is that it makes you look at things in a new way.
GoodArtYouLookNewWay
A character takes shape in the act of writing. You start with something, and you add or subtract.
CharacterWritingStartYouShape
Hemingway's short story 'Hills Like White Elephants' is a classic of its kind. It illustrates Hemingway's 'iceberg theory,' which requires that a story find its effectiveness by hiding more than it reveals.
StoryShortFindWhiteKindClassic
Copyright © 2024 QuotesDict Amitava Kumar quotes