V. S. NaipaulThere are two ways of talking. One is the easy way, where you talk lightly, and the other one is the considered way. The considered way is what I have put my name to.371Reflection
V. S. NaipaulIt was a good place for getting lost in, a city no one ever knew, a city explored from the neutral heart outward, until after many years, it defined itself into a jumble of cleari… ▶361Love
V. S. NaipaulI had no student friends to talk to about literature. My tutor was a really nice man, very charming - but he had no literary judgment. ✨ The floating man by James Campbell, … ▶361Reading
V. S. NaipaulThe world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it. ✨ A Bend in the River. Book by V. S. Naipaul, May 1979.372Reading
V. S. NaipaulIt is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling.372Thought
V. S. NaipaulMost people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of … ▶374Humanity
V. S. NaipaulIf writers just sit and talk about oppression, they are not going to do much writing.363Politics
V. S. NaipaulI 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… ▶353ThoughtTime
V. S. NaipaulIt has had a calamitous effect on converted peoples. To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say 'my ancestral cu… ▶331HumanityReadingTime
V. S. NaipaulMy grief is that the publishing world, the book writing world is an extraordinary shoddy, dirty, dingy world.367ReadingSadness
V. S. NaipaulIf a writer doesn't generate hostility, he is dead.334Death
V. S. NaipaulI profoundly feel that people are letting you down all the time.378HumanityTime
V. S. NaipaulThe reason is that they define how I have gone about my business. I have trusted to intuition. I did it at the beginning. I do it even now. I have no idea how things might turn ou… ▶313Thought
V. S. NaipaulWhenever I have had to write fiction, I've always had to invent a character who roughly has my background.302Humanity
V. S. NaipaulI will say I am the sum of my books. ✨ V. S. Naipaul (2012). Literary Occasions: Essays, p.189, Pan Macmillan335Reading
V. S. NaipaulAfrica has no future. ✨ A singular writer by Maya Jaggi, www.theguardian.com. September 7, 2001.313HopeTime
V. S. NaipaulHome is, I suppose just a child's idea. A house at night, and a lamp in the house. A place to feel safe. ✨ A home for Mr Naipaul. Interview with Tim Adams, www.theguardian.c… ▶302Thought
V. S. NaipaulI am the kind of writer that people think other people are reading.347HumanityReadingThought
V. S. NaipaulWriters should provoke disagreement.292Life
V. S. NaipaulSmall things start us in new ways of thinking314Thought
V. S. NaipaulWhen I learnt to write I became my own master, I became very strong, and that strength is with me to this very day.271Reading
V. S. NaipaulI could meet dreadful people and end up seeing the world through their eyes, seeing their frailties, their needs.304HumanityReading
V. S. NaipaulIt's very attractive to people to be a victim. Instead of having to think out the whole situation, about history and your group and what you are doing... if you begin from the poi… ▶293HumanityThought
V. S. NaipaulIt isn't that there's no right and wrong here. There's no right. ✨ V. S. Naipaul (2012). A Bend in the River, p.60, Pan Macmillan337Reflection
V. S. NaipaulEverybody is interesting for an hour, but few people can last more than two. ✨ V.S. NAIPAUL : Wanderer Of Endless Curiosity by R.Z. Sheppard, content.time.com. July 10, 1989… ▶3610HumanityTime
V. S. NaipaulIn our island myth this was the prescribed end of marriages like mine: the wife goes off with someone from the Cercle Sportif, outside whose gates at night the willingly betrayed … ▶272Humanity
V. S. NaipaulIn 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.316Death
V. S. NaipaulI think when you see so many Hindu temples of the 10th century or earlier disfigured, defaced, you realise that something terrible happened. I feel the civilisation of that closed… ▶316DeathThought
V. S. NaipaulThe biography of a writer - or even the autobiography - will always have this incompleteness. ✨ V. S. Naipaul (2012). Literary Occasions: Essays, p.189, Pan Macmillan273Politics
V. S. NaipaulJudgment is contained in the act of trying to understand.284Reflection
