V. S. Naipaul quotes - page 5

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)
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 feel that at any stage of my literary career it could have been said that the last book contained all the others. View quote
V. S. Naipaul
Men need history; it helps them to have an idea of who they are. View quote
V. S. Naipaul
Nehru was unique in recent world history: a colonial protest figure, a folk hero who did not appeal to fanaticism but was a reasonable, reasoning man. A man committed to science, religious tolerance, the rule of law and the rights of man. View quote
V. S. Naipaul
That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. View quote
V. S. Naipaul
It is an immense human idea. It cannot be reduced to a fixed system. It cannot generate fanaticism. But it is known to exist, and because of that, other more rigid systems in the end blow away. View quote
V. S. Naipaul
Non-fiction can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies. View quote
V. S. Naipaul
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. View quote
V. S. Naipaul
Home is, I suppose just a child's idea. A house at night, and a lamp in the house. A place to feel safe. View quote
V. S. Naipaul
People come and go all the time; the world has always been in movement. View quote
V. S. Naipaul
You can't deny what you've learned; you can't deny your travels; you can't deny the nature of your life. (V. S. Naipaul)
We cannot understand all the traits we have inherited. Sometimes we can be strangers to ourselves. View quote
V. S. Naipaul
I still think it's really quite wonderful when I read a sentence of mine and it has that quality of lastingness. View quote
V. S. Naipaul
The Europeans wanted gold and slaves, like everybody else; but at the same time they wanted statues put up to themselves as people who had done good things for the slaves. View quote
V. S. Naipaul
Ignorant people in preppy clothes are more dangerous to America than oil embargoes. View quote
V. S. Naipaul
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. View quote
V. S. Naipaul
You need someone to see what you've done, to read it and to understand it and to appreciate what's gone into it. View quote
V. S. Naipaul
A businessman is someone who buys at ten and is happy to get out at twelve. The other kind of man buys at ten, sees it rise to eighteen and does nothing. He is waiting for it to rise to twenty. When it drops to two he waits for it to get back to ten. View quote
V. S. Naipaul
If it was Europe that gave us on the coast some idea of our history, it was Europe, I feel, that also introduced us to the lie. View quote
V. S. Naipaul
To read a newspaper for the first time is like coming into a film that has been on for an hour. Newspapers are like serials. To understand them you have to take knowledge to them . . . best is the knowledge provided by the newspaper itself. View quote
V. S. Naipaul
I have told people who ask for lectures that I have no lecture to give. And that is true. It might seem strange that a man who has dealt in words and emotions and ideas for nearly fifty years shouldn't have a few to spare, so to speak. But everything of value about me is in my books. Whatever 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. That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. (V. S. Naipaul)