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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.

— V. S. Naipaul The Enigma of Arrival (1987)

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More quotes by V. S. Naipaul

A writer is in the end not his books, but his myth. And that myth is in the keeping of others.

Steinbeck in Monterey (1970)

What matters in the end in literature, what is always there, is the truly good.

Reading and Writing : A Personal Account (2000)

One isn't born one's self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people's ideas — and you have to work through it all.

The time before Islam is a time of blackness: that is part of Muslim theology. History has to serve theology.”

Among the Believers (1981)

If a writer doesn’t generate hostility, he is dead.

All V. S. Naipaul quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: V. S. Naipaul (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.