#be

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

#beyond #child #children #come #grandmother

Each book, intuitively sensed and, in the case of fiction, intuitively worked out, stands on what has gone before, and grows out of it. I feel that at any stage of my literary career it could have been said that the last book contained all the others. ↗

— V. S. Naipaul

#been #before #book #career #case

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

#became #discovery #i #interested #islamic

I know my father and my mother, but beyond that I cannot go. My ancestry is blurred. ↗

— V. S. Naipaul

#beyond #blurred #cannot #father #go

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 #foolish #grandeur #guerrilla #had

In a way my reputation has become that of the curmudgeon. ↗

— V. S. Naipaul

#reputation #way

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. ↗

— V. S. Naipaul

#attractive #begin #being #doing #got

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

#behold #editor #feminine #good #publisher

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

#another #because #childhood #complete #deal

The longer I live the more convinced I become that one of the greatest honors we can confer on other people is to see them as they are, to recognize not only that they exist, but that they exist in specific ways and have specific realities. ↗

— V. S. Naipaul

#confer #convinced #exist #greatest #honors