I will say I am the sum of my books.
V.S. NAIPAULThe world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.
More V.S. Naipaul Quotes
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Judgment is contained in the act of trying to understand.
V.S. NAIPAUL -
This is unusual for me. I have given readings and not lectures. I have told people who ask for lectures that I have no lecture to give. And that is true.
V.S. NAIPAUL -
It was a good place for getting lost in, a city no one ever knew, a city explored from the neutral heart outward, until after many years, it defined itself into a jumble of clearings separated by stretches of the unknown, through which the narrowest of paths had been cut.
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In England people are very proud of being very stupid.
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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 -
There are two ways of talking. One is the easy way, where you talk lightly, and the other one is the considered way. The considered way is what I have put my name to.
V.S. NAIPAUL -
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 -
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.
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A civilization which has taken over the world cannot be said to be dying.
V.S. NAIPAUL -
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 -
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 -
If ever you wish to meet intellectual frauds in quantity, go to Paris.
V.S. NAIPAUL -
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.
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An autobiography can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies: it reveals the writer totally.
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One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria.
V.S. NAIPAUL