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If it was Europe that gave us on the coast some idea of our history, it was Europe, I feel, that also introduced us to the lie.

V. S. Naipaul

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V. S. Naipaul
Died: 2018
Died: August 11
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul
V.S. Naipaul
Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul
Idea
History
Also
Ideas
Introduced
Feel
Coast
Feels
Gave
Europe
Lying

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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.
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My life is short. I can't listen to banality.
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I know my father and my mother, but beyond that I cannot go. My ancestry is blurred.
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The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.
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The family feuds or the village feuds often had to do with an idea of honor. Perhaps it was a peasant idea perhaps this idea of honor is especially important to a society without recourse to law or without confidence in law.
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Home is, I suppose just a child's idea. A house at night, and a lamp in the house. A place to feel safe.
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People come and go all the time the world has always been in movement.
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In a way my reputation has become that of the curmudgeon.
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All the things that were read to me by my father were stories about things becoming all right.
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When I learnt to write I became my own master, I became very strong, and that strength is with me to this very day.
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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.
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An autobiography can distort facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies: it reveals the writer totally.
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I have always moved by intuition alone. I have no system, literary or political. I have no guiding political idea.
V. S. Naipaul
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The melancholy thing about the world is that it is full of stupid people and the world is run for the benefit of the stupid and common.
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My grief is that the publishing world, the book writing world is an extraordinary shoddy, dirty, dingy world.
V. S. Naipaul
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If a writer doesn't generate hostility, he is dead.
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Men need history it helps them to have an idea of who they are. But history, like sanctity, can reside in the heart it is enough that there is something there.
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Life is a helluva thing. You can see trouble coming and you can't do a damn thing to prevent it coming. You just got to sit and watch and wait.
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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
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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