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That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing.

— V. S. Naipaul

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Writing

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 →

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Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Francis Bacon Meditationes sacræ (1597)

Strength of creative writing lies in the skill of handling words and articulating artistic expression of feelings.”

Suman Pokhrel

The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

Robert Benchley

Three sleepless nights I passed in sounding on,
Through words and things, a dim and perilous way.

William Wordsworth Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)

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.