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Everybody is interesting for an hour, but few people can last more than two.

V.S. Naipaul

This is unusual for me. I have given readings and not lectures. I have told people who ask for lectures that I have no lecture to give. And that is true.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Lecture Myself People Reading True
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
If ever you wish to meet intellectual frauds in quantity, go to Paris.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Fake Intellectual Mistake Quantity Travel 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
All the things that were read to me by my father were stories about things becoming all right.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Father Reading Right Story
A civilization which has taken over the world cannot be said to be dying.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Civilization Conquer Death World
In England people are very proud of being very stupid.
V.S. NAIPAUL

People Proud Stupidity
One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Comedy Deep Moments Writing
Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Freedom Limitation People Possible Vision World
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
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
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

Beyond Children Home Myself World
In a way my reputation has become that of the curmudgeon.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Myself Reputation Way
The world is always in movement.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Change Movement One Liner World
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
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

Everybody is interesting for an hour, but few people can last more than two.

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Everybody is interesting for an hour, but few people can last more than two.

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