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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

We cannot understand all the traits we have inherited. Sometimes we can be strangers to ourselves.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Inheritance Ourselves Stranger Understand
Life doesn’t have a neat beginning and a tidy end; life is always going on. You should begin in the middle and end in the middle, and it should be all there.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Beginning End Life Yourself
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
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 past has to be seen to be dead; or the past will kill.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Death Kill Past See
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
One must always try to see the truth of a situation – it makes things universal.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Oneself Situation Truth Universe
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
The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Ourselves Punishment True
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
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
I am the kind of writer that people think other people are reading.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Kind Myself People Thinking 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
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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