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A Bend in the River

V.S. Naipaul

Top 10 Best Quotes

“Non-fiction can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies.”

“After all, we make ourselves according to the ideas we have of our possibilities.”

“Like many isolated people, they were wrapped up in themselves and not too interested in the world outside.”

“Going home at night! It wasn't often that I was on the river at night. I never liked it. I never felt in control. In the darkness of river and forest you could be sure only of what you could see — and even on a moonlight night you couldn't see much. When you made a noise — dipped a paddle in the water — you heard yourself as though you were another person. The river and the forest were like presences, and much more powerful than you. You felt unprotected, an intruder ... You felt the land taking you back to something that was familiar, something you had known at some time but had forgotten or ignored, but which was always there. You felt the land taking you back to what was there a hundred years ago, to what had been there always.”

“It isn't that there's no right and wrong here. There's no right.”

“Small things start us in new ways of thinking”

“government that breaks its own laws can also easily break you.”

“Anybody can be decisive during a panic; it takes a strong man to act during a boom.”

“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.”

“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 get to twenty. The beauty of numbers. When it drops to ten again he waits for it to get back to eighteen. When it drops to two he waits for it to get back to ten. Well, it gets back there. But he has wasted a quarter of his life. And all he's got out of his money is a little mathematical excitement.”

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Book Keywords:

change, business, inspirational-quotes, practical, epiphany, writing-philosophy

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