Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" I came to London. It had become the center of my world and I had worked hard to come to it. And I was lost. "
V. S. Naipaul
Come
World
Lost
Related Quotes:
" If a writer doesn't generate hostility, he is dead. "
V. S. Naipaul
Writer
Hostility
He
" 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
" One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria. "
V. S. Naipaul
Comedy
Moment
Deepest
" A civilization which has taken over the world cannot be said to be dying. "
V. S. Naipaul
Over
Dying
Said
" 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
I Am
Judging
Look
" 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
" 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
" Judgment is contained in the act of trying to understand. "
V. S. Naipaul
Trying
Act
Judgment
" You need someone to see what you've done, to read it and to understand it and to appreciate what's gone into it. "
V. S. Naipaul
Need
You
Appreciate
" Africa is not a fun place, you know. A fun place is somewhere that lifts the spirits, that cossets the senses. I don't think that can be said of the Africa I traveled in. "
V. S. Naipaul
Know
You
Think
" I have trusted to my intuition to find the subjects, and I have written intuitively. I have an idea when I start, I have a shape; but I will fully understand what I have written only after some years. "
V. S. Naipaul
Start
Understand
Will
" An autobiography can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies: it reveals the writer totally. "
V. S. Naipaul
Autobiography
Facts
Never
" The ancillary aspect of every British city now is the council estate. "
V. S. Naipaul
City
British
Council
" If a man begins writing at thirty, by the time he is fifty or sixty, the bulk of his work has been done. By the time he is eighty, he's got nothing more, you know? "
V. S. Naipaul
Work
Know
Time
" Many writers tend to write summing-up books at the end of their lives. "
V. S. Naipaul
Books
Tend
Many
" Writers should provoke disagreement. "
V. S. Naipaul
Writers
Should
Disagreement
" 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
" If writers just sit and talk about oppression, they are not going to do much writing. "
V. S. Naipaul
Talk
Writing
Oppression
" 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
" I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. "
V. S. Naipaul
Writing
Within
Two
" The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it. "
V. S. Naipaul
Place
Become
Men
" I profoundly feel that people are letting you down all the time. "
V. S. Naipaul
Letting
You
Time
" I had no student friends to talk to about literature. My tutor was a really nice man, very charming - but he had no literary judgment. "
V. S. Naipaul
Man
Friends
Student
" 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
" Africans need to be kicked, that's the only thing they understand. "
V. S. Naipaul
Kicked
Thing
Only
" At school I had only admirers; I had no friends. "
V. S. Naipaul
Had
Friends
School
" The world is always in movement. "
V. S. Naipaul
World
Movement
Always
" 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
Think
Still
Mine
" Trinidad may seem complex, but to anyone who knows it, it is a simple, colonial, philistine society. "
V. S. Naipaul
Society
Simple
Complex
" In a way my reputation has become that of the curmudgeon. "
V. S. Naipaul
Become
Reputation
Way