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" Many writers tend to write summing-up books at the end of their lives. "
V. S. Naipaul
Books
Tend
Many
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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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Details
Life
" Trinidad may seem complex, but to anyone who knows it, it is a simple, colonial, philistine society. "
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Society
Simple
Complex
" I know my father and my mother, but beyond that I cannot go. My ancestry is blurred. "
V. S. Naipaul
Father
Beyond
Mother
" 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.' "
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You
Culture
History
" 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. "
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Year
Political
Life
" I read many things. I read to fill in my knowledge of the world. "
V. S. Naipaul
Things
Many
World
" I have a very small public. "
V. S. Naipaul
Very
Public
Small
" 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
" 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
" The ancillary aspect of every British city now is the council estate. "
V. S. Naipaul
City
British
Council
" I'm thought to be a tough writer, but I'm really a softie. "
V. S. Naipaul
Writer
Thought
Tough
" There are certain things that are too painful for people to even write about sometimes, and there are certain things that are too hard to read about again. "
V. S. Naipaul
Write
Sometimes
People
" An autobiography can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies: it reveals the writer totally. "
V. S. Naipaul
Autobiography
Facts
Never
" My grief is that the publishing world, the book writing world is an extraordinary shoddy, dirty, dingy world. "
V. S. Naipaul
Grief
Writing
Dirty
" Writing has to support itself. "
V. S. Naipaul
Itself
Support
Writing
" 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
" In a way my reputation has become that of the curmudgeon. "
V. S. Naipaul
Become
Reputation
Way
" 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
" 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
" I am the kind of writer that people think other people are reading. "
V. S. Naipaul
I Am
People
Kind
" 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
" If writers just sit and talk about oppression, they are not going to do much writing. "
V. S. Naipaul
Talk
Writing
Oppression
" The world is always in movement. "
V. S. Naipaul
World
Movement
Always
" I profoundly feel that people are letting you down all the time. "
V. S. Naipaul
Letting
You
Time
" Some writers can only deal with childhood experience, because it's complete. For another kind of writer, life goes on, and he's able to keep processing that as well. "
V. S. Naipaul
Childhood
Life
Well
" 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
" Writers should provoke disagreement. "
V. S. Naipaul
Writers
Should
Disagreement
" Africa has no future. "
V. S. Naipaul
Future
No Future
Africa
" 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
" I will say I am the sum of my books. "
V. S. Naipaul
Will
Am
Books