Ashwin Sanghi Quotes

Our country has the oldest tradition of storytelling, and this was much before writing stories even became a norm.

Character is what you are. Reputation is what people think you are.

Though it is very easy to do valuations, eyeballs and brand prominence surveys, you should never allow any of them to influence the balance sheet.

We don't need to dumb down our stuff. And it's important to know how far we can push readers.

Worry is like a rocking chair; it keeps you in motion but gets you nowhere

I believe that patterns tend to repeat themselves and there are connections between the past and the present. There is the old proverb that reads, You cant know where youre going if you dont know where youve been. For me, history is like that. When you take history and combine it with myth, then you get mystery.

If there is one city apart from Mumbai where I would love to settle down, it has to be Chennai.

I would imagine that anyone picking up a book written by me would expect a fast-paced story that requires minimal effort to turn the pages. The reader would also be looking for some out-of-the-ordinary revelations along the way. At the end of the day, I'm a writer who simply loves revealing stuff that is out-of-the-ordinary.

I am a businessman at the end of the day. I have grown up with Excel sheets. I start out writing my novel with spreadsheets and the milestones in each chapter highlighted.

When working on a period, it is the finer details that evoke imagery that helps in cinematic adaptations.

In the Sanghi family, there is no one who has undertaken intellectual pursuits.

I've always been fascinated by books. When I was young, my grandfather used to hand out a book - which would be anything from a biography to a classic - to me every week and ask me to write a piece on what I thought about it. On the other hand, my mother used to love reading thrillers and bestsellers.

Battles are won and lost before they are fought.

Vish, the creator; and Shiv, the destroyer, are simply two faces of the very same coin.

O Rakshas, everything is always all right in the end. If it isn't all right, then it isn't the end

The reality of the writer's world is that you set yourself up for future disappointment with every success that you deliver because you end up raising your audience's expectations.

The Divine is simply that which science has not yet explained. In effect, God = Infinity - Human Knowledge.

What is divine? It is simply that which man has not been able to understand. Once you do, it loses its divinity.

I want to be remembered as a storyteller more than someone who had something meaningful to say.

I want my writing to reach people. I don't write for a market. I write from my heart, something that appeals to me. The marketing, segmenting etc., can be done by your publisher, not you.

Writing helps me create a different world that I can escape to.

There has to be a protagonist who has to overcome challenges, and there will be a race to finish.

Writing is incidental to my primary objective, which is spinning a good yarn. I view myself as a storyteller more than a writer. The story - and hence the extensive research that goes into each one of my books - is much more important than the words that I use to narrate it.

What I have found is that, in a family business structure, sometimes what is needed is a sense of discipline rather than creativity. You have to take everyones ideas and make it work. When you are dealing with money, there is a limitation on how creative you can be.

I want to make sure that my writing grips the reader from the word 'go.'

While growing up, I always had to depend on foreign authors for page-turners. I think of myself as a commercial writer, and my job is simple to entertain you.

Writing is a intensely personal activity. I can pen down my best thoughts when Im alone. But when one is elevated into the stature of an author, you have to think about your books in terms of their business angle.

I like to joke that I probably hold the world record for rejection letters. Yes, the truth is that I was fed up of being rejected repeatedly, and self-publicatio n was an act of defiance at traditional publishing. But life works in strange ways.

I work in a business environment forty hours a week, and writing is what I do to unwind. It allows me to transport myself to a happy place where I can indulge my hopes, beliefs, aspirations and fantasies. It also allows me to live and breathe a topic for eighteen months while I'm researching and writing.

Winning an award is a great feeling but winning the Vodafone Crossword Popular Choice Award is particularly exhilarating because it is based upon public voting. I find it a strange quirk of fate that Chanakya's Chant, a political tale, should end up winning an election!

I was a businessman for 16 years of my life, so when I started writing, I wanted to keep my literary identity separate.

Writing was my route to creative expression, and I needed to write about the things that interested me.

A myth is a lie that conceals or reveals a truth. But if it reveals even a strand of history or truth, that's what gets my adrenaline going.

Admiration from my readers inspire me, and the only 'formula' I believe in towards making a good writer is: 'to thine own self be true!'

After writing each novel, I would spend days poring over suggestions from my editor.

I believe that every writer evolves with every successive novel. I view myself as work-in-progress.

I don't care if my books don't sell abroad; we have a large enough market in our country. I write for Indian readers.

I was learning book-keeping at the age of 12, but it never stopped me from pursuing literature. Over the years, I grew to love the written word.

I was passionate about reading from an early age, and I would always be carrying a different book each week.

A book and a movie are different animals. You need a cinematic perspective to be involved in the motion pictures. And this is something I lack.

I am a part of the old school where I feel that purity of the language should be retained. But English is a constantly evolving language where new words are being added to the dictionary, so I don't see any harm in experimenting with the language. Only poor editing standards need to be improved.

What I would not like is to be ignored. I write from the heart. I don't write for me. I write for my readers.

Oral storytelling goes back so long ago, and those stories that were told orally were always layered and changed with time.

My attention span is very limited, and I watch just one or two movies a year.

Mythology works... because Indians have been bred on myths.

In order to become the master, a ruler must profess to be a servant of the people.

It may sound very strange, but I love the freedom that writing a novel gives me. It is an unhindered experience. If I come after a bad day, I can decide that my protagonist will die on page 100 of my novel in a 350-page story.

To remain standing one often has to fall.