V. S. Naipaul Quotes - Page 5

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• 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

  Nice, Men, Literature

  "The floating man" by James Campbell, www.theguardian.com. December 15, 2007.

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• 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

  Oxford, Crafts, Regard

  "The floating man" by James Campbell, www.theguardian.com. December 15, 2007.

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• I grew up in a small place and left it when I was quite young and entered the bigger world.

  V. S. Naipaul

  World, Grew Up, Bigger

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• 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

  Class, People, India

  "A home for Mr Naipaul". Interview with Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. September 11, 2004.

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• 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

  World, London, Lost

  V. S. Naipaul (2012). “An Area of Darkness: His Discovery of India”, p.14, Pan Macmillan

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• Look, boys, it ever strike you that the world not real at all? It ever strike you that we have the only mind in the world and you just thinking up everything else? Like me here, having the only mind in the world, and thinking up you people here, thinking up the war and all the houses and the ships and them in the harbour. That ever cross your mind?

  V. S. Naipaul

  Real, War, Boys

  V.S. Naipaul (2011). “Collected Short Fiction”, p.65, Everyman's Library

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• What was past was past. I suppose that was the general attitude.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Attitude, Past

  V.S. Naipaul (2010). “Literary Occasions: Essays”, p.238, Vintage

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• In our island myth this was the prescribed end of marriages like mine: the wife goes off with someone from the Cercle Sportif, outside whose gates at night the willingly betrayed husband waits in his motorcar. The circumstances were slightly.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Husband, Night, Islands

  V. S. Naipaul (2012). “The Mimic Men”, p.95, Pan Macmillan

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• As a child I knew almost nothing, nothing beyond what I had picked up in my grandmother's house. All children, I suppose, come into the world like that, not knowing who they are.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Children, Grandmother, Ghouls

  V. S. Naipaul (2012). “Literary Occasions: Essays”, p.196, Pan Macmillan

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• 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

  Editors, Feminine, Publishers

  "VS Naipaul finds no woman writer his literary match - not even Jane Austen" by Amy Fallon, www.theguardian.com. June 1, 2011.

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• I have a very small public.

  V. S. Naipaul

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• 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

  Father, Thinking, People

  V.S. Naipaul (2010). “Literary Occasions: Essays”, p.240, Vintage

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• Where jargon turns living issues into abstractions, and where jargon ends by competing with jargon, people don't have causes. They only have enemies.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Issues, People, Enemy

  V. S. Naipaul (2012). “Literary Occasions: Essays”, p.201, Pan Macmillan

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• Trinidad may seem complex, but to anyone who knows it, it is a simple, colonial, philistine society.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Simple, May, Trinidad

  "Reluctant hero" by Caryl Phillips, www.theguardian.com. Ocotber 11, 2001.

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• Writing has to support itself.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Writing, Support

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• Great writing can be done in biography, history, art.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Art, Writing, Done

  "A singular writer". Interview with Maya Jaggi, www.theguardian.com. September 7, 2001.

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• Whenever I have had to write fiction, I've always had to invent a character who roughly has my background.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Writing, Character, Fiction

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