black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

In a way my reputation has become that of the curmudgeon.

V.S. Naipaul

Each book, intuitively sensed and, in the case of fiction, intuitively worked out, stands on what has gone before, and grows out of it.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Fiction Growth Intuition
It isn’t that there’s no right and wrong here. There’s no right.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Answer Philosophy Right Wrong
Everybody is interesting for an hour, but few people can last more than two.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Interest People Time
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.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Death Man Moments Myself Sadness Sorrow Strange Victory
Ignorant people in preppy clothes are more dangerous to America than oil embargoes.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Appearance Clothes Dangerous Ignorance People
In the beginning, before the arrival of the white men, I had considered myself neutral. I had wanted neither side to win, neither the army nor the rebels. As it turned out, both sides lost.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Beginning Lost Man Myself Side White Win
The world outside existed in a kind of darkness; and we inquired about nothing.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Darkness Existence Kind World
I could meet dreadful people and end up seeing the world through their eyes, seeing their frailties, their needs.
V.S. NAIPAUL

End Eyes Need People See World
An autobiography can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies: it reveals the writer totally.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Fact Fiction Lying Writing
To this day, if you ask me how I became a writer, I cannot give you an answer. To this day, if you ask me how a book is written, I cannot answer. For long periods, if I didn’t know that somehow in the past I had written a book, I would have given up.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Book Day Myself Past Writing
The ancillary aspect of every British city now is the council estate.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Aspect City Estate
The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Ourselves Punishment True
It 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 clearings separated by stretches of the unknown, through which the narrowest of paths had been cut.
V.S. NAIPAUL

City Goodness Heart Lost Path Place Separate Unknown
All cultures have been mingled forever.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Culture Forever One Liner
I will say I am the sum of my books.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Books Myself
My life is short. I can’t listen to banality.
V.S. NAIPAUL

Life Listening Myself

In a way my reputation has become that of the curmudgeon.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

In a way my reputation has become that of the curmudgeon.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More V.S. Naipaul Quotes