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As a child I knew almost nothing, nothing beyond what I had picked up in my grandmother’s house. All children, I suppose, come into the world like that, not knowing who they are.

V.S. Naipaul

His ignorance seemed to widen with everything he read.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Himself Ignorance Reading
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

Country Culture Decision Essence Expression Law Live Yourself
But everything of value about me is in my books.
V.S. NAIPAUL

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

Inheritance Ourselves Stranger Understand
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

Born Expectation Ideas People Work Yourself
The writer is all alone.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Alone One Liner Writing
All cultures have been mingled forever.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Culture Forever One Liner
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
I’m thought to be a tough writer, but I’m really a softie.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Myself Personality Soft Thinking Tough Writing
The melancholy thing about the world is that it is full of stupid people; and the world is run for the benefit of the stupid and common.
V.S. NAIPAUL

People Sadness Stupidity World
The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Ourselves Punishment True
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
In a way my reputation has become that of the curmudgeon.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Myself Reputation Way
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’m my own writer. My material means I’m entirely separate.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Material Myself Separate Writing
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

Myself Pieces Reading Woman
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
Writing has to support itself.
V.S. NAIPAUL

One Liner Support Writing
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 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
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
One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Comedy Deep Moments Writing
The family feuds or the village feuds often had to do with an idea of honor. Perhaps it was a peasant idea; perhaps this idea of honor is especially important to a society without recourse to law or without confidence in law.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Confidence Family Fight Ideas Important Law Respect Society
As a child I knew almost nothing, nothing beyond what I had picked up in my grandmother’s house. All children, I suppose, come into the world like that, not knowing who they are.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Beyond Children Home Myself World
All the details of the life and the quirks and the friendships can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain. No amount of documentation, however fascinating, can take us there.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Detail Friendship Inspirational Life Mystery Writing
I’ve never abandoned the novel.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Abandonment Myself Novel

As a child I knew almost nothing, nothing beyond what I had picked up in my grandmother’s house. All children, I suppose, come into the world like that, not knowing who they are.

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As a child I knew almost nothing, nothing beyond what I had picked up in my grandmother’s house. All children, I suppose, come into the world like that, not knowing who they are.

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Popular Authors

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