Everybody is interesting for an hour, but few people can last more than two.
V.S. NAIPAULThe 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.
More V.S. Naipaul Quotes
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It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That’s where the mischief starts. That’s where everything starts unravelling.
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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’.
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Men need history; it helps them to have an idea of who they are. But history, like sanctity, can reside in the heart; it is enough that there is something there.
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If ever you wish to meet intellectual frauds in quantity, go to Paris.
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I am the kind of writer that people think other people are reading.
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All cultures have been mingled forever.
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In England people are very proud of being very stupid.
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But everything of value about me is in my books.
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A civilization which has taken over the world cannot be said to be dying.
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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.
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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.
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Life is a helluva thing. You can see trouble coming and you can’t do a damn thing to prevent it coming. You just got to sit and watch and wait.
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It isn’t that there’s no right and wrong here. There’s no right.
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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.
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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