V. S. Naipaul Quotes
-
My life is short. I can't listen to banality.
-
The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.
-
Africans need to be kicked, that's the only thing they understand.
-
The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.
-
I've been a free man.
-
Africa has no future.
-
I'm very content.
-
In England I am not English, in India I am not Indian. I am chained to the 1,000 square miles that is Trinidad; but I will evade that fate yet.
-
I have trusted to my intuition to find the subjects, and I have written intuitively. I have an idea when I start, I have a shape; but I will fully understand what I have written only after some years.
-
Writing has to support itself.
-
An autobiography can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies: it reveals the writer totally.
-
It is important not to trust people too much.
-
A civilization which has taken over the world cannot be said to be dying.
-
In a way my reputation has become that of the curmudgeon.
-
When I learnt to write I became my own master, I became very strong, and that strength is with me to this very day.
-
If you decide to move to another country and to live within its laws you don't express your disregard for the essence of the culture. It's a form of aggression.
-
Judgment is contained in the act of trying to understand.
-
I read many things. I read to fill in my knowledge of the world.
-
I grew up in a small place and left it when I was quite young and entered the bigger world.
-
The biography of a writer - or even the autobiography - will always have this incompleteness.
-
Africa is not a fun place, you know. A fun place is somewhere that lifts the spirits, that cossets the senses. I don't think that can be said of the Africa I traveled in.
-
That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing - which is never an easy thing to do.
-
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.
-
I'm thought to be a tough writer, but I'm really a softie.