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" If writers just sit and talk about oppression, they are not going to do much writing. "
V. S. Naipaul
Talk
Writing
Oppression
Related Quotes:
" If you write a novel alone you sit and you weave a little narrative. And it's O.K., but it's of no account. "
V. S. Naipaul
Write
You
Narrative
" How can you be an atheist and have an ideology to go with it? To be an atheist is to be free of some areas of belief. I don't see how that can become an ideology. "
V. S. Naipaul
See
Atheist
Become
" 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
" My life is short. I can't listen to banality. "
V. S. Naipaul
Short
Life
My Life
" 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 don't feel I can speak with authority for many other people. "
V. S. Naipaul
Feel
Speak
People
" We made no inquiries about India or about the families people had left behind. When our ways of thinking had changed, and we wished to know, it was too late. I know nothing of the people on my father's side; I know only that some of them came from Nepal. "
V. S. Naipaul
Know
Late
Thinking
" 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
" I went to India and met some people who had been involved in this guerrilla business, middle-class people who were rather vain and foolish. There was no revolutionary grandeur to it. Nothing. "
V. S. Naipaul
Business
People
Some People
" Africa has no future. "
V. S. Naipaul
Future
No Future
Africa
" I am the kind of writer that people think other people are reading. "
V. S. Naipaul
I Am
People
Kind
" I'm thought to be a tough writer, but I'm really a softie. "
V. S. Naipaul
Writer
Thought
Tough
" I know my father and my mother, but beyond that I cannot go. My ancestry is blurred. "
V. S. Naipaul
Father
Beyond
Mother
" If you want to write serious books, you must be ready to break the forms, break the forms. "
V. S. Naipaul
Ready
Serious
Want
" I'm the kind of writer that people think other people are reading. "
V. S. Naipaul
People
Writer
Reading
" 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
" 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
Luck
I Am
Moment
" The biography of a writer - or even the autobiography - will always have this incompleteness. "
V. S. Naipaul
Always
Writer
Will
" I'm very content. "
V. S. Naipaul
Content
Very
" It is important not to trust people too much. "
V. S. Naipaul
Important
Too Much
Much
" If ever you wish to meet intellectual frauds in quantity, go to Paris. "
V. S. Naipaul
You
Intellectual
Go
" Nothing was made in Trinidad. "
V. S. Naipaul
Nothing
Made
" Africans need to be kicked, that's the only thing they understand. "
V. S. Naipaul
Kicked
Thing
Only
" 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 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
" One isn't born one's self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people's ideas - and you have to work through it all. "
V. S. Naipaul
Self
Expectations
Ideas
" 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. "
V. S. Naipaul
Country
You
Aggression
" I have a very small public. "
V. S. Naipaul
Very
Public
Small
" 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
Strength
Day
Me
" I read many things. I read to fill in my knowledge of the world. "
V. S. Naipaul
Things
Many
World