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The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.

V.S. Naipaul

Everybody is interesting for an hour, but few people can last more than two.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Interest People Time
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

Learning Life Nature Travel 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
In England people are very proud of being very stupid.
V.S. NAIPAUL

People Proud Stupidity
My life is short. I can’t listen to banality.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Life Listening Myself
The world outside existed in a kind of darkness; and we inquired about nothing.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Darkness Existence Kind World
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
The world is always in movement.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Change Movement One Liner World
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
I became very interested in the Islamic question, and thought I would try to understand it from the roots, ask very simple questions and somehow make a narrative of that discovery.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Discover Interest Question Religion Simplicity Thinking
I could meet dreadful people and end up seeing the world through their eyes, seeing their frailties, their needs.
V.S. NAIPAUL

End Eyes Need People See World
Each book, intuitively sensed and, in the case of fiction, intuitively worked out, stands on what has gone before, and grows out of it.
V.S. NAIPAUL

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

Fake Intellectual Mistake Quantity Travel Yourself
All cultures have been mingled forever.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Culture Forever One Liner
Small things start us in new ways of thinking.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Inspirational One Liner Start Thinking Way
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
We cannot understand all the traits we have inherited. Sometimes we can be strangers to ourselves.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Inheritance Ourselves Stranger Understand
Ignorant people in preppy clothes are more dangerous to America than oil embargoes.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Appearance Clothes Dangerous Ignorance People
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
When I learnt to write I became my own master, I became very strong, and that strength is with me to this very day.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Learning Myself Strength Strong Writing
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
Judgment is contained in the act of trying to understand.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Act Judgement Try Understand Wisdom
I’ve never abandoned the novel.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Abandonment Myself Novel
Writers should provoke disagreement.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Agreement Argument Writing
I’m my own writer. My material means I’m entirely separate.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Material Myself Separate Writing
Whatever extra there is in me at any given moment isn’t fully formed. I am hardly aware of it; it awaits the next book. It will – with luck – come to me during the actual writing, and it will take me by surprise
V.S. NAIPAUL

Books Luck Moments Myself Wait Writing
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

Lecture Myself People Reading True

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.

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The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.

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Popular Authors

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