Gulzar Quotes

1. “Nostalgia is not a place to live.”

2. “My thinking process starts with my pen.”

3. “It's always humbling and thrilling to be appreciated.”

4. “My mother tongue is Punjabi, but my first language is Urdu, which was the case with the people in undivided Punjab.”

5. “The voice of universe can be silenced but the voice of writers cannot be.”

6. “I believe words should amaze or amuse. Only then will the listener want to understand the meaning of the song.”

7. “Nostalgia is a sweet place for a poet and writer to be in. But it's an indulgence; a distraction. You can't live in a distraction.”

8. “It is good to be well connected with English language, literature and history, but the knowledge of our culture and roots is equally important.”

9. “My country is India but my motherland remains Pakistan.”

10. “I write in Urdu and everything is written by my hand.”

11. “My daughter is married here in Patiala and I have shared a bond with Punjabi as a language.”

12. “Time will change and with it music will too. Our speed has changed, clothes have changed, food habits have changed, so why should music remain the same?”

13. “I am very happy with 'Jai Ho' from 'Slumdog Millionaire' getting the Golden Globe. It means a lot for Indians and the music here.”

14. “All day long I keep wishing, let partition be a past now. It should only remain a part of history.”

15. “I clearly remember the pain of partition; the whole of Delhi was seeing the struggle of refugees. We stayed near Roshanara Bagh, and the whole city appeared like a refugee camp.”

16. “I want young children to savor and enjoy Tagore like I did since I was a child. He was too great a poet of India to be kept limited to Bengal. Everybody should read and celebrate him.”

17. “It was the British who defined religion to divide and rule. That is what created the heat. That is what created the cut. Partition happened because of the rulers, fueled by a few powerful families on both sides who stood to gain. It is the politicians that keep everyone fighting.”

18. “I think translations should convey the feelings expressed in the original work. This is what I have believed in and practised.”

19. “I try and move with the times. If I stop and begin thinking about the past there will be a problem.”

20. “I often write about the moon, and more often than not, it is to symbolise a person, or a quality.”

21. “I am not here forever, so I wanted to do the best for the coming generation.”

22. “Getting your work published is a major struggle.”

23. “I had written the song 'aaza aaza Shamiyane ke tale… ' for Ghai's film 'Yuvvraj' but he felt the song did not suit his film and Rahman suggested that the track should be used in 'Slumdog' and it fitted well with the movie.”

24. “If a film promotes communal harmony, which for me is beyond religion, I am happy to work on it because the film's premise is in line with my beliefs.”

25. “When I write a poem, I do not have to worry about using a higher Urdu vocabulary because I know the reader knows Urdu well.”

26. “In film lyrics, I avoid Persianised words because they are not widely understood.”

27. “There are no borders in poetry and language.”

28. “Being in the Sahitya Akademi, I did know quite a few poets - Jayanta Mahapatra, Sitakant Mahapatra, Sunil Gangopadhyay, to name a few. There were many poets.”

29. “The poetry of India can be truly known only through scanning the poetry of all languages.”

30. “I can manage in six languages - Marathi and Gujarati, in addition to Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi and Bangla.”

31. “We've talked and written about the World War so much that it has almost been purged off. The bitterness is gone. The drama came to an end and it is history.”

32. “Short stories and poems are an intense burst of emotions.”

33. “'Two' is not written in the usual style of a novel. It's a straightforward, linear narrative of my times, as I observed partition, and is told through multiple characters.”

34. “Look, when a song becomes a hit, it happens because of its tune and melody, and not for the lyrics in the first place.”

35. “There are many songs that have become popular and people sing along with it without knowing the meaning of its lyrics.”

36. “When it comes to our 'Jai ho,' the song became a super hit because of the composition of Rahman… He made the tune.”

37. “I am a greedy poet. I keep munching life all the time. Sweet, sour and bitter moments.”

38. “People mostly associate Tagore only with Gitanjali. That is the mistake they make. Gitanjali is just one per cent of his oeuvre.”

39. “It's a common notion that if you like Tagore, then he must have had an influence on your life. While I like Tagore's poetry and his thoughts, he doesn't influence my work.”

40. “A writer just speaks from his heart, mind and soul. They are the conscience keepers of the society. They are the keepers of the soul of the society.”

41. “When my family migrated from Punjab during the Partition, we came to Delhi and I was enrolled in United Mission School.”

42. “I have translated Bengali poets such as Subhash Mukhopadhyay and Sunil Gangopadhyay before. These were published by Hindi and Urdu magazines. But to take on Tagore's work is no easy task.”

43. “Unfortunately, many just read 'Gitanjali' and think they know Tagore. Nothing could be further from the truth. He is much, much more.”

44. “Cinema has a large scope as it is a mirror of society and with the mindset changing, people are taking it more seriously.”

45. “If two-three films of mine release at the same time and if all of them feel like they are from the same lyricist then something is not quite right. The language of all has to be different if they are different stories.”

46. “If you notice in my own films the blending of songs is distinct. They narrate stories and scenes.”

47. “My most favourite song is 'Aave re hichki.'”

48. “A writer can be identified just through his sigh, as a mouthful of words are flooded out in his single sigh.”

49. “There is an old guest house opposite my house, and grandsons visit from time to time from the U.S., every time grown up a little. I don't know whether the same grandchildren come every time or it is someone else.”

50. “Delhi has statues and busts of so many politicians. But what about our artistes?”

51. “I did not have a black coat to wear to the Oscars. It was a mandatory dress code, that was the reason I gave it a miss.”

52. “Fear comes from your past observations. That fear settles inside you. It becomes your psyche. Something triggers it and it fuels that subconscious. There is no logic to it.”

53. “When you shake mercury it keeps trembling until it reaches a point when it stops. When you get me started on Partition, that is how I am. It goes back and keeps shaking me up, on and on.”

54. “I've been wearing white since my college days. I like color, but if I wear colored clothes now, it would feel like I'm being false. And that's the worst thing I could be.”

55. “My songs are not angry or bitter, because I am not bitter. I'm hopeful, and as an artist I have to be, not just for my future or for the future of my children but for the whole world.”

56. “I do play tennis in shorts, I have driven across the length and breadth of the country from Khardung La pass to Kanyakumari in my beloved Ambassador car, and I did compile my 100 Lyrics book, inspired by Lyrics by Sting. I don't subscribe to any definition of an Urdu poet.”

57. “Being master of Urdu doesn't interest me, being part of the global society does, breathing hope into that society matters to me.”

58. “I firmly believe that Tagore should be taught in schools all over India.”

59. “Let me say that discovering Tagore was the turning point of my life.”

60. “I wasn't happy with Tagore's own translations in English. Maybe he was, but I wasn't, so I took it upon myself to do it.”

61. “When you find something that makes you feel that only you can do it and nobody else, then you automatically want to do it.”

62. “Because of my pseudonym Gulzar, which is how I am known, some people think I am a Muslim.”

63. “My first love is literature.”

64. “It's not easy to make films that one wants to because it is not easy to find a producer that fast for the subjects I want to make. They are not hot cakes in the market.”

65. “Another reason I did not make films is that I liked being unemployed, since that is when I read, study and write.”

66. “If one is aware and alive, then it is one's relationships that make you live. It makes life worth living.”

67. “Since my schooldays, I've read the translations of Bengali writers. I'm Punjabi, but I read a lot of Bengali and Urdu literature.”

68. “I consider Rahman as a great composer. I had a lump in my throat when I heard his name being announced. I thanked God that he got an Oscar for Original Score, that was more than enough for me. I wonder what might have happened to me if I had gone there. I might have cried.”

69. “The success of Indian music at the Oscars is a great achievement.”

70. “NASA is my favorite website. The universe with its abstract nature attracts me. The abstract element in my poetry comes from there.”

71. “When writers say that they need to 'set the mood' or 'get into the zone', those are all ways to procrastinate. Not prerequisites.”

72. “I am not an artist. I am not a painter.”

73. “As I grew, I began learning and speaking a word or two in Bengali and that increased my friends circle.”

74. “Dabbling with Tagore was always scary. It happens with masters, with contemporary poets you know their vibes and their meaning. Tagore was different; his aura and the feel of his language was different.”

75. “Translating one region's works for another region has a beauty with an inborn connect. We might speak different languages but our culture and history is one.”

76. “It is important for poets and writers today to know their shortcomings, and be able to edit their own work as well as reject them if they are not up to their standards.”

77. “Poetry is not about personal pain or tragedy. It should resonate the society's grief.”

78. “A social consciousness should be reflected in your poetry.”

79. “All my earlier awards were for a particular film or a song. Even the Oscar or the Grammy was for a particular song, but Dadasaheb Phalke is for my entire work so it is the biggest honor for me.”

80. “We have been teaching 'Paradise Lost' and 'Julius Caesar' to the students but we are not teaching them 'Kalidas' or Indian drama and epics.”

81. “Gujarat has a rich culture and in my view every Indian should contribute to highlighting our heritage.”

82. “Even 150 years of the first war of Independence was marked with a series of programs, but somehow the Jallianwala Bagh incident hasn't been given the attention it deserves.”

83. “Do you know Afghan children wear shoes when they sleep, so they can run easily if a bomb falls during the night? Iraq has been similarly pushed against the wall. What proof did the West ultimately have, what justification for raining bombs on them?”

84. “Democracy is essential for equality. Thank God, Indian democracy is still working. That is because every Indian is essentially a thinker. Thinking is not limited to the elite.”

85. “A vendor selling coconuts on the road is a philosopher. He will have ideas on politics, economics, history, sports. This has saved India. The fact that the common Indian is a thinker is vital.”

86. “Power manipulates the innocent and terror is born.”

87. “A film carries six fine arts - it consists of architecture, painting, music, writing or literature, photography and performance. It's a conjecture of all these things and yet based on literature.”

88. “Lyrics is commissioned work, it is my profession. But poetry is my statement to life.”

89. “I love the sufiana style of writing in Tagore's poetry.”

90. “Theatre is a very beautiful and interesting medium because it's a live show, unlike a film - once released, it's gone.”

91. “In films, there is no scope to rectify any mistake… but in theatre, you can rectify it the next day.”

92. “My father used to run a shop in Sadar Bazar in old Delhi, and most of my time would go spending days and evenings at the shop, whiling away hours doing nothing.”

93. “I used to put black ink on the author's name in a book and write my name instead to check how it would look there - such was my passion!”

94. “When I used to listen to the poets in other languages and the kind of appreciation they received, I wanted to be there on the dais and experience that myself.”

95. “Cinema is not Bible writing. It doesn't teach you morals, good values to live. Cinema is not meant for that. If you're looking at cinema that it'll tell you good values then you're mistaken.”

96. “Translations are very important these days, since an average person can only know 2-3 three languages. We have so many languages in India and poems are being written in as many of them.”

97. “I read books, physical books. I am comfortable with it, I can carry it. It is my habit.”

98. “Partition happened in my life but do you think I should be living in partition? I have seen it but as India has moved further and as a generation has moved further I am also moving further.”

99. “I've always maintained that RD Burman and Sanjeev Kumar were my two anchors.”

100. “A writer will not keep quiet. He will express his opinion through writings.”