black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

Writers should provoke disagreement.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Agreement Argument Writing
The first 50 years of the cinema were absolutely great years. Original minds were at work establishing the ways to tell a story. And what is happening now is a copying, a pastiche-ing of what was done by great men.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Establishment Greatness Imitation Man Mindset Movie Original Story Time
Many writers tend to write summing-up books at the end of their lives.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Book End Live 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
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
In a way my reputation has become that of the curmudgeon.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Myself Reputation Way
The writer is all alone.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Alone One Liner 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
If writers just sit and talk about oppression, they are not going to do much writing.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Oppression Sit Talk 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’m my own writer. My material means I’m entirely separate.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Material Myself Separate Writing
The past has to be seen to be dead; or the past will kill.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Death Kill Past See
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
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 reason is that they define how I have gone about my business. I have trusted to intuition. I did it at the beginning. I do it even now. I have no idea how things might turn out, where in my writing I might go next.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Beginning Business Intuition Myself Reason
One must always try to see the truth of a situation – it makes things universal.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Oneself Situation Truth Universe

I still think it’s really quite wonderful when I read a sentence of mine and it has that quality of lastingness.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

I still think it’s really quite wonderful when I read a sentence of mine and it has that quality of lastingness.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More V.S. Naipaul Quotes