The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.
V.S. NAIPAULThe world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.
V.S. NAIPAULI still think it’s really quite wonderful when I read a sentence of mine and it has that quality of lastingness.
V.S. NAIPAULAll cultures have been mingled forever.
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.
V.S. NAIPAULWriting has to support itself.
V.S. NAIPAULIf a writer doesn’t generate hostility, he is dead.
V.S. NAIPAULI read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not.
V.S. NAIPAULMy life is short. I can’t listen to banality.
V.S. NAIPAULThe ancillary aspect of every British city now is the council estate.
V.S. NAIPAULThe writer is all alone.
V.S. NAIPAULA civilization which has taken over the world cannot be said to be dying.
V.S. NAIPAULWhatever extra there is in me at any given moment isn’t fully formed. I am hardly aware of it; it awaits the next book. It will – with luck – come to me during the actual writing, and it will take me by surprise
V.S. NAIPAULI 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.
V.S. NAIPAULThis is unusual for me. I have given readings and not lectures. I have told people who ask for lectures that I have no lecture to give. And that is true.
V.S. NAIPAULI don’t feel I can speak with authority for many other people.
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.
V.S. NAIPAUL