S. Naipaul
S. Naipaul
men sorrow victory
And it was strange, I thought, that sorrow lasts and can make a man look forward to death, but the mood of victory fills a moment and then is over
men two waiting
A businessman is someone who buys at ten and is happy to get out at twelve. The other kind of man buys at ten, sees it rise to eighteen and does nothing. He is waiting for it to rise to twenty. When it drops to two he waits for it to get back to ten.
army winning men
In the beginning, before the arrival of the white men, I had considered myself neutral. I had wanted neither side to win, neither the army nor the rebels. As it turned out, both sides lost.
heart men ideas
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.
men free-man
I've been a free man.
nice men literature
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.
men years great-year
The first 50 years of the cinema were absolutely great years. Original minds were at work establishing the ways to tell a story. And what is happening now is a copying, a pastiche-ing of what was done by great men.
men world
The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.
ambition fame mysterious wish
It is mysterious that the ambition should have come first - the wish to be a writer, to have that distinction, that fame - and that this ambition should have come long before I could think of anything to write about.
books knew library realized remember taking
I knew he was a writer, we had all his books in the library, but it never really clicked. And I remember being in the library and taking out one of his books and then I realized -- he did this for a living.
knowledge
I read many things. I read to fill in my knowledge of the world.
certain chance explore felt fictional force form gave life nonfiction spend
What I felt was, if you spend your life just writing fiction, you are going to falsify your material. And the fictional form was going to force you to do things with the material, to dramatize it in a certain way. I thought nonfiction gave one a chance to explore the world, the other world, the world that one didn't know fully.
areas ideology
How can you be an atheist and have an ideology to go with it? To be an atheist is to be free of some areas of belief. I don't see how that can become an ideology.
years year-end community
Argentine political life is like the life of an ant community or an African forest tribe: full of events, full of crisis and deaths, but life is always cyclical, and the year ends as it begins.