V. S. Naipaul Quotes

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V. S. Naipaul

Profession : Novelist

Birth : August 17, 1932

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

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

V. S. Naipaul

My publisher, who was so good as a taster and editor, when she became a writer, lo and behold, it was all this feminine tosh.

V. S. Naipaul

If writers just sit and talk about oppression, they are not going to do much writing.

V. S. Naipaul

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.

V. S. Naipaul

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

V. S. Naipaul

I've never abandoned the novel.

V. S. Naipaul

I had no student friends to talk to about literature. My tutor was a really nice man, very charming - but he had no literary judgment.

V. S. Naipaul

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

If a writer doesn't generate hostility, he is dead.

V. S. Naipaul

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

V. S. Naipaul

I don't feel I can speak with authority for many other people.

V. S. Naipaul

The ancillary aspect of every British city now is the council estate.

V. S. Naipaul

To be a writer you have to be out in the world, you have to risk yourself in the world, you have to be immersed in the world, you have to go out looking for it. This becomes harder as you get older because there's less energy, the days are shorter for older people and it's not so easy to go out and immerse oneself in the world outside.

V. S. Naipaul

I know my father and my mother, but beyond that I cannot go. My ancestry is blurred.

V. S. Naipaul

In England people are very proud of being very stupid.

V. S. Naipaul

It is important not to trust people too much.

V. S. Naipaul

I profoundly feel that people are letting you down all the time.

V. S. Naipaul

I went to India and met some people who had been involved in this guerrilla business, middle-class people who were rather vain and foolish. There was no revolutionary grandeur to it. Nothing.

V. S. Naipaul

Making a book is such a big enterprise.

V. S. Naipaul