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" Writing has to support itself. "
V. S. Naipaul
Itself
Support
Writing
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" In Trinidad, where as new arrivals we were a disadvantaged community, that excluding idea was a kind of protection; it enabled us - for the time being, and only for the time being - to live in our own way and according to our own rules, to live in our own fading India. "
V. S. Naipaul
Own
Live
Kind
" I have a very small public. "
V. S. Naipaul
Very
Public
Small
" I really wasn't equipped to be a writer when I left Oxford. But then I set out to learn. I've always had the highest regard for the craft. I've always felt it was work. "
V. S. Naipaul
Work
Learn
Craft
" I always knew who I was and where I had come from. I was not looking for a home in other people's lands. "
V. S. Naipaul
Come
Always
Who
" 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
" I will say I am the sum of my books. "
V. S. Naipaul
Will
Am
Books
" 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
" The world outside existed in a kind of darkness; and we inquired about nothing. "
V. S. Naipaul
World
Darkness
Kind
" At school I had only admirers; I had no friends. "
V. S. Naipaul
Had
Friends
School
" 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
" I became very interested in the Islamic question, and thought I would try to understand it from the roots, ask very simple questions and somehow make a narrative of that discovery. "
V. S. Naipaul
Thought
Roots
Questions
" If ever you wish to meet intellectual frauds in quantity, go to Paris. "
V. S. Naipaul
You
Intellectual
Go
" A cat only has itself. "
V. S. Naipaul
Cat
Only
Itself
" 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
" 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
" What was past was past. I suppose that was the general attitude. "
V. S. Naipaul
Suppose
Attitude
Past
" Trinidad may seem complex, but to anyone who knows it, it is a simple, colonial, philistine society. "
V. S. Naipaul
Society
Simple
Complex
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" I profoundly feel that people are letting you down all the time. "
V. S. Naipaul
Letting
You
Time
" Africans need to be kicked, that's the only thing they understand. "
V. S. Naipaul
Kicked
Thing
Only
" Judgment is contained in the act of trying to understand. "
V. S. Naipaul
Trying
Act
Judgment
" If writers just sit and talk about oppression, they are not going to do much writing. "
V. S. Naipaul
Talk
Writing
Oppression
" 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
" If you want to write serious books, you must be ready to break the forms, break the forms. "
V. S. Naipaul
Ready
Serious
Want
" 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
" 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
" I know my father and my mother, but beyond that I cannot go. My ancestry is blurred. "
V. S. Naipaul
Father
Beyond
Mother