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

V.S. Naipaul

The Europeans wanted gold and slaves, like everybody else; but at the same time they wanted statues put up to themselves as people who had done good things for the slaves.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Gold Goodness Help Slave Time
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
Writing has to support itself.
V.S. NAIPAUL

One Liner Support Writing
There are two ways of talking. One is the easy way, where you talk lightly, and the other one is the considered way. The considered way is what I have put my name to.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Easy Light Myself Name Talk Way
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
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
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
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
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
Many writers tend to write summing-up books at the end of their lives.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Book End Live Writing
His ignorance seemed to widen with everything he read.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Himself Ignorance Reading
If writers just sit and talk about oppression, they are not going to do much writing.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Oppression Sit Talk Writing
Everybody is interesting for an hour, but few people can last more than two.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Interest People Time
The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Man Place World Worth
The writer is all alone.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Alone One Liner Writing
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

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

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