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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

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

Life Listening Myself
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
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
Many writers tend to write summing-up books at the end of their lives.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Book End Live 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
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.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Attraction Beginning Group History Intellectual Myself People Victim
The reason is that they define how I have gone about my business. I have trusted to intuition. I did it at the beginning. I do it even now. I have no idea how things might turn out, where in my writing I might go next.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Beginning Business Intuition Myself Reason
It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That’s where the mischief starts. That’s where everything starts unravelling.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Ideal Reveal Start View World Wrong
The ancillary aspect of every British city now is the council estate.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Aspect City Estate
Judgment is contained in the act of trying to understand.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Act Judgement Try Understand Wisdom
It is important not to trust people too much.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Important One Liner People Trust
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
Some writers can only deal with childhood experience, because it’s complete. For another kind of writer, life goes on, and he’s able to keep processing that as well.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Childhood Deal Experience Himself Kind Life Writing
The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Ourselves Punishment True
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
It isn’t that there’s no right and wrong here. There’s no right.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Answer Philosophy Right Wrong

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More V.S. Naipaul Quotes