#w

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 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

#craft #equipped #felt #had #highest

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

I'm the kind of writer that people think other people are reading. ↗

— V. S. Naipaul

#kind #other #people #reading #think

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

My grief is that the publishing world, the book writing world is an extraordinary shoddy, dirty, dingy world. ↗

— V. S. Naipaul

#book writing #dirty #extraordinary #grief #publishing