Top 70 Gulzar Quotes

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.

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

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!

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

When it comes to our ‘Jai ho,’ the song became a super hit because of the composition of Rahman… He made the tune.

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.

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

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

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?

Getting your work published is a major struggle.

Unfortunately, many just read ‘Gitanjali’ and think they know Tagore. Nothing could be further from the truth. He is much, much more.

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

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

When writers say that they need to ‘set the mood’ or ‘get into the zone’, those are all ways to procrastinate. Not prerequisites.

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.

There are no borders in poetry and language.

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

Theatre is a very beautiful and interesting medium because it’s a live show, unlike a film – once released, it’s gone.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

‘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.

I am not an artist. I am not a painter.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

My country is India but my motherland remains Pakistan.

We have been teaching ‘Paradise Lost’ and ‘Julius Caesar’ to the students but we are not teaching them ‘Kalidas’ or Indian drama and epics.

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

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.

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

Power manipulates the innocent and terror is born.

Nostalgia is not a place to live.

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

Poetry is not about personal pain or tragedy. It should resonate the society’s grief.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

I love the sufiana style of writing in Tagore’s poetry.

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

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.

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

I’ve always maintained that RD Burman and Sanjeev Kumar were my two anchors.

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

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.

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