V. S. Naipaul Quotes - Page 2

One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria.

We cannot understand all the traits we have inherited. Sometimes we can be strangers to ourselves.

The world is always in movement.

I will say I am the sum of my books.

It 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 culture does not exist, it doesn't matter'.

You can't deny what you've learned; you can't deny your travels; you can't deny the nature of your life.

In England people are very proud of being very stupid.

Ignorant people in preppy clothes are more dangerous to America than oil embargoes.

Out of its squalor and human decay, its eruptions of butchery, India produced so many people of grace and beauty, ruled by elaborate courtesy. Producing too much life, it denied the value of life; yet it permitted a unique human development to so many. Nowhere were people so heightened, rounded and individualistic; nowhere did they offer themselves so fully and with such assurance. To know Indians was to take a delight in people as people; every encounter was an adventure. I did not want India to sink [out of my memory]; the mere thought was painful.

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

And it was strange, I thought, that sorrow lasts and can make a man look forward to death, but the mood of victory fills a moment and then is over

I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not.

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

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.

One must always try to see the truth of a situation - it makes things universal.

Making a book is such a big enterprise.

If ever you wish to meet intellectual frauds in quantity, go to Paris.

The world outside existed in a kind of darkness; and we inquired about nothing.

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

Writers should provoke disagreement.

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.

All cultures have been mingled forever.

I still think it's really quite wonderful when I read a sentence of mine and it has that quality of lastingness.

I'm thought to be a tough writer, but I'm really a softie.