I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not.
V.S. NAIPAULIn a way my reputation has become that of the curmudgeon.
More V.S. Naipaul Quotes
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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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I have always moved by intuition alone. I have no system, literary or political. I have no guiding political idea.
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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.
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Ignorant people in preppy clothes are more dangerous to America than oil embargoes.
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The family feuds or the village feuds often had to do with an idea of honor. Perhaps it was a peasant idea; perhaps this idea of honor is especially important to a society without recourse to law or without confidence in law.
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Judgment is contained in the act of trying to understand.
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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.
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All the details of the life and the quirks and the friendships can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain. No amount of documentation, however fascinating, can take us there.
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I’m thought to be a tough writer, but I’m really a softie.
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But everything of value about me is in my books.
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It isn’t that there’s no right and wrong here. There’s no right.
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You can’t deny what you’ve learned; you can’t deny your travels; you can’t deny the nature of your life.
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A civilization which has taken over the world cannot be said to be dying.
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Writers should provoke disagreement.
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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.
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My life is short. I can’t listen to banality.
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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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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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The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.
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I’ve never abandoned the novel.
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All the things that were read to me by my father were stories about things becoming all right.
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I will say I am the sum of my books.
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You need someone to see what you’ve done, to read it and to understand it and to appreciate what’s gone into it.
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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.
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I could meet dreadful people and end up seeing the world through their eyes, seeing their frailties, their needs.
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When I learnt to write I became my own master, I became very strong, and that strength is with me to this very day.
V.S. NAIPAUL