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You can’t deny what you’ve learned; you can’t deny your travels; you can’t deny the nature of your life.

V.S. Naipaul

If ever you wish to meet intellectual frauds in quantity, go to Paris.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Fake Intellectual Mistake Quantity Travel Yourself
That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing – which is never an easy thing to do.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Easy Element Myself Surprise Writing
If a writer doesn’t generate hostility, he is dead.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Creation Death Writing
All the details of the life and the quirks and the friendships can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain. No amount of documentation, however fascinating, can take us there.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Detail Friendship Inspirational Life Mystery Writing
To this day, if you ask me how I became a writer, I cannot give you an answer. To this day, if you ask me how a book is written, I cannot answer. For long periods, if I didn’t know that somehow in the past I had written a book, I would have given up.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Book Day Myself Past Writing
Everybody is interesting for an hour, but few people can last more than two.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Interest People Time
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 still think it’s really quite wonderful when I read a sentence of mine and it has that quality of lastingness.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Myself Quality Quite Reading Thinking Wonderful
All the things that were read to me by my father were stories about things becoming all right.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Father Reading Right Story
Men need history; it helps them to have an idea of who they are. But history, like sanctity, can reside in the heart; it is enough that there is something there.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Enough History Ideas Man Need
The first 50 years of the cinema were absolutely great years. Original minds were at work establishing the ways to tell a story. And what is happening now is a copying, a pastiche-ing of what was done by great men.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Establishment Greatness Imitation Man Mindset Movie Original Story Time
Making a book is such a big enterprise.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Big Books Enterprise
I will say I am the sum of my books.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Books Myself
It has had a calamitous effect on converted peoples. To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say ‘my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn’t matter’.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Affect Calm Destroy Existence History Myself Past People
My life is short. I can’t listen to banality.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Life Listening Myself
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

You can’t deny what you’ve learned; you can’t deny your travels; you can’t deny the nature of your life.

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You can’t deny what you’ve learned; you can’t deny your travels; you can’t deny the nature of your life.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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