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Writing has to support itself.

V.S. Naipaul

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
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 past has to be seen to be dead; or the past will kill.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Death Kill Past See
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
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
I don’t feel I can speak with authority for many other people.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Authority Feeling Myself People Talk Worth
Home is, I suppose just a child’s idea. A house at night, and a lamp in the house. A place to feel safe.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Children Feeling Home Ideas Night Place Safety
It is important not to trust people too much.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Important One Liner People Trust
Argentine political life is like the life of an ant community or an African forest tribe: full of events, full of crisis and deaths, but life is always cyclical, and the year ends as it begins.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Beginning Community Death End Life Myself Politics
Many writers tend to write summing-up books at the end of their lives.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Book End Live Writing
Writers should provoke disagreement.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Agreement Argument Writing
All cultures have been mingled forever.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Culture Forever One Liner
People come and go all the time; the world has always been in movement.
V.S. NAIPAUL

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

Interest People Time

Writing has to support itself.

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Writing has to support itself.

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