I’ve never abandoned the novel.
V.S. NAIPAULI’ve never abandoned the novel.
V.S. NAIPAULIgnorant people in preppy clothes are more dangerous to America than oil embargoes.
V.S. NAIPAULI’m my own writer. My material means I’m entirely separate.
V.S. NAIPAULThe past has to be seen to be dead; or the past will kill.
V.S. NAIPAULMany writers tend to write summing-up books at the end of their lives.
V.S. NAIPAULI profoundly feel that people are letting you down all the time.
V.S. NAIPAULI am the kind of writer that people think other people are reading.
V.S. NAIPAULMaking a book is such a big enterprise.
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. NAIPAULThere are two ways of talking. One is the easy way, where you talk lightly, and the other one is the considered way. The considered way is what I have put my name to.
V.S. NAIPAULYou can’t deny what you’ve learned; you can’t deny your travels; you can’t deny the nature of your life.
V.S. NAIPAULMen 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.
V.S. NAIPAULI have always moved by intuition alone. I have no system, literary or political. I have no guiding political idea.
V.S. NAIPAULOne isn’t born one’s self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people’s ideas – and you have to work through it all.
V.S. NAIPAULThe only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.
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