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" But everything of value about me is in my books. "
V. S. Naipaul
Books
About
Me
Related Quotes:
" 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
Unusual
True
People
" What was past was past. I suppose that was the general attitude. "
V. S. Naipaul
Suppose
Attitude
Past
" The ancillary aspect of every British city now is the council estate. "
V. S. Naipaul
City
British
Council
" My publisher, who was so good as a taster and editor, when she became a writer, lo and behold, it was all this feminine tosh. "
V. S. Naipaul
Editor
She
Good
" Nothing was made in Trinidad. "
V. S. Naipaul
Nothing
Made
" 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
House
Place
Child
" Africa has no future. "
V. S. Naipaul
Future
No Future
Africa
" Great writing can be done in biography, history, art. "
V. S. Naipaul
Art
Done
Great
" Argentine political life is like the life of an ant community or an African forest tribe: full of events, full of crisis and deaths, but life is always cyclical, and the year ends as it begins. "
V. S. Naipaul
Year
Political
Life
" In a way my reputation has become that of the curmudgeon. "
V. S. Naipaul
Become
Reputation
Way
" I don't feel I can speak with authority for many other people. "
V. S. Naipaul
Feel
Speak
People
" 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
View
History
Group
" 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
Men
Cinema
Done
" I read many things. I read to fill in my knowledge of the world. "
V. S. Naipaul
Things
Many
World
" To be a writer you have to be out in the world, you have to risk yourself in the world, you have to be immersed in the world, you have to go out looking for it. This becomes harder as you get older because there's less energy, the days are shorter for older people and it's not so easy to go out and immerse oneself in the world outside. "
V. S. Naipaul
Looking
Energy
People
" Writers should provoke disagreement. "
V. S. Naipaul
Writers
Should
Disagreement
" I know my father and my mother, but beyond that I cannot go. My ancestry is blurred. "
V. S. Naipaul
Father
Beyond
Mother
" A cat only has itself. "
V. S. Naipaul
Cat
Only
Itself
" I grew up in a small place and left it when I was quite young and entered the bigger world. "
V. S. Naipaul
Place
World
Young
" One is made by all the things around one. There are many things that have made one. For a writer to go around looking for things that have made him is asking for trouble. It's like giving a character to yourself. Can't do it. Can't do it. These things are just there. Is that enough? "
V. S. Naipaul
Yourself
Giving
Go
" 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. "
V. S. Naipaul
Writing
Details
Life
" The longer I live the more convinced I become that one of the greatest honors we can confer on other people is to see them as they are, to recognize not only that they exist, but that they exist in specific ways and have specific realities. "
V. S. Naipaul
See
More
Live
" I've never abandoned the novel. "
V. S. Naipaul
Abandoned
Novel
Never
" I have always moved by intuition alone. I have no system, literary or political. I have no guiding political idea. "
V. S. Naipaul
Political
Always
Intuition
" An autobiography can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies: it reveals the writer totally. "
V. S. Naipaul
Autobiography
Facts
Never
" All the things that were read to me by my father were stories about things becoming all right. "
V. S. Naipaul
Father
Things
Right
" If you want to write serious books, you must be ready to break the forms, break the forms. "
V. S. Naipaul
Ready
Serious
Want
" A civilization which has taken over the world cannot be said to be dying. "
V. S. Naipaul
Over
Dying
Said
" 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
You
Talk
Name
" I could meet dreadful people and end up seeing the world through their eyes, seeing their frailties, their needs. "
V. S. Naipaul
Seeing
End
Eyes