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What Matters In The End In Literature, What Is Always There, Is The Truly Good. And- Though Played Out Forms Can Throw Up Miraculous Sports Like The Importance Of Being Earnest Or Decline And Fall- What Is Good Is Always What Is New, In Both Form And Content. What Is Good Forgets Whatever Models It Might Have Had, And Is Unexpected; We Have To Catch It On The Wing.

-V. S. Naipaul

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What Matters In The

V. S. Naipaul

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What Matters In The End In Literature, What Is Always There, Is The Truly Good. And- Though Played Out Forms Can Throw Up Miraculous Sports Like The Importance Of Being Earnest Or Decline And Fall- What Is Good Is Always What Is New, In Both Form And Content. What Is Good Forgets Whatever Models It Might Have Had, And Is Unexpected; We Have To Catch It On The Wing.

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I Often Wonder What Would Have Happened To Me If I Hadn't Made That Decision. I Suppose I Would Have Sunk. I Suppose I Would Have Found Some Kind Of Hole And Tried To Hide Or Pass. After All, We Make Ourselves According To The Ideas We Have Of Our Possibilities. I Would Have Hidden In My Hole And Been Crippled By My Sentimentality, Doing What I Was Doing, And Doing It Well, But Always Looking For The Wailing Wall. And I Would Never Have Seen The World As The Rich Place That It Is. You Wouldn't Have Seen Me Here In Africa, Doing What I Do.

I Will Say I Am The Sum Of My Books.

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Some Writers Can Only Deal With Childhood Experience, Because It's Complete. For Another Kind Of Writer, Life Goes On, And He's Able To Keep Processing That As Well.

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.

People Come And Go All The Time; The World Has Always Been In Movement.

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To Read A Newspaper For The First Time Is Like Coming Into A Film That Has Been On For An Hour. Newspapers Are Like Serials. To Understand Them You Have To Take Knowledge To Them; The Knowledge That Serves Best Is The Knowledge Provided By The Newspaper Itself.

His Ignorance Seemed To Widen With Everything He Read.

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If It Was Europe That Gave Us On The Coast Some Idea Of Our History, It Was Europe, I Feel, That Also Introduced Us To The Lie.

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I Came To London. It Had Become The Center Of My World And I Had Worked Hard To Come To It. And I Was Lost.

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Whatever Extra There Is In Me At Any Given Moment Isn't Fully Formed. I Am Hardly Aware Of It; It Awaits The Next Book. It Will - With Luck - Come To Me During The Actual Writing, And It Will Take Me By Surprise

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I've Been A Free Man.

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If A Writer Doesn't Generate Hostility, He Is Dead.

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But Everything Of Value About Me Is In My Books.

All The Things That Were Read To Me By My Father Were Stories About Things Becoming All Right.

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