V. S. Naipaul Quotes

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.
V. S. Naipaul

Writing, Judging, Easy

It'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 point of view of being a victim, you've got it half-made. I mean intellectually.
V. S. Naipaul

History, Mean, Whole

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.
V. S. Naipaul

Hard, Lost, Become

One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria.
V. S. Naipaul

Moment, Comedy, Deepest

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.
V. S. Naipaul

Men, Nothing, Become

All the details of the life and the quirks and the friendships can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain. No amount of documentation, however fascinating, can take us there.
V. S. Naipaul

Life, Writing, Mystery

Argentine political life is like the life of an ant community or an African forest tribe: full of events, full of crisis and deaths, but life is always cyclical, and the year ends as it begins.
V. S. Naipaul

Life, Crisis, Political

I could meet dreadful people and end up seeing the world through their eyes, seeing their frailties, their needs.
V. S. Naipaul

End, Through, Eyes

I will say I am the sum of my books.
V. S. Naipaul

The world is always in movement.
V. S. Naipaul

You need someone to see what you've done, to read it and to understand it and to appreciate what's gone into it.
V. S. Naipaul

Someone, Done, Understand

A cat only has itself.
V. S. Naipaul

A civilization which has taken over the world cannot be said to be dying.
V. S. Naipaul

Cannot, Said, Dying

Africa has no future.
V. S. Naipaul

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.
V. S. Naipaul

Fun, Said, Place

Africans need to be kicked, that's the only thing they understand.
V. S. Naipaul

Understand, Kicked

All the things that were read to me by my father were stories about things becoming all right.
V. S. Naipaul

Father, Read, Stories

An autobiography can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies: it reveals the writer totally.
V. S. Naipaul

Lies, Facts, Writer

As a child I knew almost nothing, nothing beyond what I had picked up in my grandmother's house. All children, I suppose, come into the world like that, not knowing who they are.
V. S. Naipaul

Children, Nothing, Child

But everything of value about me is in my books.
V. S. Naipaul

Everything, Value, Books

Each book, intuitively sensed and, in the case of fiction, intuitively worked out, stands on what has gone before, and grows out of it. I feel that at any stage of my literary career it could have been said that the last book contained all the others.
V. S. Naipaul

Book, Career, Before

Great writing can be done in biography, history, art.
V. S. Naipaul

Great, History, Art

Home is, I suppose just a child's idea. A house at night, and a lamp in the house. A place to feel safe.
V. S. Naipaul

Home, Night, Place

I always knew who I was and where I had come from. I was not looking for a home in other people's lands.
V. S. Naipaul

Home, Looking, Knew

I am the kind of writer that people think other people are reading.
V. S. Naipaul

Reading, Writer

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Biography

Nationality: Trinidadian

Born: August 17, 1932

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Cite this Page: Citation

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