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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.

— V. S. Naipaul

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Work

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)

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.

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

All V. S. Naipaul quotes →

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All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

James Howell English Proverbs (1659)

When we see a great man desiring power instead of his real goal we soon recognize that he is sick, or more precisely that his attitude to his work is sick.

Martin Buber What is Man? (1938)

The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.

Robert Frost A Boy's Will (1913)

In a society such as ours, it is almost impossible for a person to be responsible.

Jacques Ellul The Betrayal by Technology (1993)

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.