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Argentine political life is like the life of an ant community or an African forest tribe: full of events, full of crisis and deaths, but life is always cyclical, and the year ends as it begins.

V.S. Naipaul

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
Life is a helluva thing. You can see trouble coming and you can’t do a damn thing to prevent it coming. You just got to sit and watch and wait.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Hell Life Patience Prevent Trouble Wait Yourself
The family feuds or the village feuds often had to do with an idea of honor. Perhaps it was a peasant idea; perhaps this idea of honor is especially important to a society without recourse to law or without confidence in law.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Confidence Family Fight Ideas Important Law Respect Society
His ignorance seemed to widen with everything he read.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Himself Ignorance Reading
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
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
The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Man Place World Worth
In the beginning, before the arrival of the white men, I had considered myself neutral. I had wanted neither side to win, neither the army nor the rebels. As it turned out, both sides lost.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Beginning Lost Man Myself Side White Win
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
The world outside existed in a kind of darkness; and we inquired about nothing.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Darkness Existence Kind World
But everything of value about me is in my books.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Books Myself Value
I always knew who I was and where I had come from. I was not looking for a home in other people’s lands.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Born Hands Home Myself People Search
My life is short. I can’t listen to banality.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Life Listening Myself
The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Ourselves Punishment True
The ancillary aspect of every British city now is the council estate.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Aspect City Estate
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

Argentine political life is like the life of an ant community or an African forest tribe: full of events, full of crisis and deaths, but life is always cyclical, and the year ends as it begins.

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Argentine political life is like the life of an ant community or an African forest tribe: full of events, full of crisis and deaths, but life is always cyclical, and the year ends as it begins.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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