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An autobiography can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies: it reveals the writer totally.

V.S. Naipaul

If a writer doesn’t generate hostility, he is dead.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Creation Death Writing
It isn’t that there’s no right and wrong here. There’s no right.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Answer Philosophy Right Wrong
I’m thought to be a tough writer, but I’m really a softie.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Myself Personality Soft Thinking Tough Writing
If writers just sit and talk about oppression, they are not going to do much writing.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Oppression Sit Talk Writing
I still think it’s really quite wonderful when I read a sentence of mine and it has that quality of lastingness.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Myself Quality Quite Reading Thinking Wonderful
I’ve never abandoned the novel.
V.S. NAIPAUL

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

Inheritance Ourselves Stranger Understand
My life is short. I can’t listen to banality.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Life Listening Myself
All cultures have been mingled forever.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Culture Forever One Liner
It is important not to trust people too much.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Important One Liner People Trust
Writing has to support itself.
V.S. NAIPAUL

One Liner Support 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.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Easy Element Myself Surprise Writing
I profoundly feel that people are letting you down all the time.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Feeling People Time Yourself
In the beginning, before the arrival of the white men, I had considered myself neutral. I had wanted neither side to win, neither the army nor the rebels. As it turned out, both sides lost.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Beginning Lost Man Myself Side White Win
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
It was a good place for getting lost in, a city no one ever knew, a city explored from the neutral heart outward, until after many years, it defined itself into a jumble of clearings separated by stretches of the unknown, through which the narrowest of paths had been cut.
V.S. NAIPAUL

City Goodness Heart Lost Path Place Separate Unknown

An autobiography can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies: it reveals the writer totally.

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An autobiography can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies: it reveals the writer totally.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More V.S. Naipaul Quotes