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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

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 ancillary aspect of every British city now is the council estate.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Aspect City Estate
If ever you wish to meet intellectual frauds in quantity, go to Paris.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Fake Intellectual Mistake Quantity Travel Yourself
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
I feel that at any stage of my literary career it could have been said that the last book contained all the others.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Books Career Feeling Myself
Writing has to support itself.
V.S. NAIPAUL

One Liner Support Writing
Writers should provoke disagreement.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Agreement Argument Writing
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
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
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
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
An autobiography can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies: it reveals the writer totally.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Fact Fiction Lying 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
One must always try to see the truth of a situation – it makes things universal.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Oneself Situation Truth Universe
If writers just sit and talk about oppression, they are not going to do much writing.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Oppression Sit Talk Writing
I don’t feel I can speak with authority for many other people.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Authority Feeling Myself People Talk Worth

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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