#on

People who have what they want are fond of telling people who haven't what they want that they really don't want it. ↗

— Ogden Nash

#haven #people #really #telling #want

I have trusted to my intuition to find the subjects, and I have written intuitively. I have an idea when I start, I have a shape; but I will fully understand what I have written only after some years. ↗

— V. S. Naipaul

#find #fully #i #idea #intuition

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 still think it's really quite wonderful when I read a sentence of mine and it has that quality of lastingness. ↗

— V. S. Naipaul

#mine #quality #quite #read #really

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

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

#another #country #culture #decide #disregard

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

#alone #little #narrative #novel #sit

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

Judgment is contained in the act of trying to understand. ↗

— V. S. Naipaul

#contained #judgment #trying #understand