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After all, we make ourselves according to the ideas we have of our possibilities.

V.S. Naipaul

In a way my reputation has become that of the curmudgeon.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Myself Reputation Way
It’s very attractive to people to be a victim. Instead of having to think out the whole situation, about history and your group and what you are doing. If you begin from the point of view of being a victim, you’ve got it half-made. I mean intellectually.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Attraction Beginning Group History Intellectual Myself People Victim
The past has to be seen to be dead; or the past will kill.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Death Kill Past See
I know my father and my mother, but beyond that I cannot go. My ancestry is blurred.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Ancestor Family Father Mom Myself
If you decide to move to another country and to live within its laws you don’t express your disregard for the essence of the culture. It’s a form of aggression.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Country Culture Decision Essence Expression Law Live Yourself
I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Myself Pieces Reading Woman
The Europeans wanted gold and slaves, like everybody else; but at the same time they wanted statues put up to themselves as people who had done good things for the slaves.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Gold Goodness Help Slave Time
I’m my own writer. My material means I’m entirely separate.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Material Myself Separate Writing
You need someone to see what you’ve done, to read it and to understand it and to appreciate what’s gone into it.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Need Reading See Understand Yourself
The melancholy thing about the world is that it is full of stupid people; and the world is run for the benefit of the stupid and common.
V.S. NAIPAUL

People Sadness Stupidity World
But everything of value about me is in my books.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Books Myself Value
I have always moved by intuition alone. I have no system, literary or political. I have no guiding political idea.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Alone Guidance Ideas Intuition Politics System
One isn’t born one’s self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people’s ideas – and you have to work through it all.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Born Expectation Ideas People Work Yourself
It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That’s where the mischief starts. That’s where everything starts unravelling.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Ideal Reveal Start View World Wrong
We cannot understand all the traits we have inherited. Sometimes we can be strangers to ourselves.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Inheritance Ourselves Stranger Understand
Judgment is contained in the act of trying to understand.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Act Judgement Try Understand Wisdom

After all, we make ourselves according to the ideas we have of our possibilities.

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After all, we make ourselves according to the ideas we have of our possibilities.

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Popular Authors

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