V. S. Naipaul
V. S. Naipaul
Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, TC, is a Trinidadian Nobel Prize-winning British writer known for his comic early novels set in Trinidad and Tobago, his bleaker later novels of the wider world, and his autobiographical chronicles of life and travels. He has published more than 30 books, both of fiction and nonfiction, over some 50 years...
NationalityTrinidadian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth17 August 1932
husband night islands
In our island myth this was the prescribed end of marriages like mine: the wife goes off with someone from the Cercle Sportif, outside whose gates at night the willingly betrayed husband waits in his motorcar. The circumstances were slightly.
all-alone
The writer is all alone.
attitude past
What was past was past. I suppose that was the general attitude.
forever culture has-beens
All cultures have been mingled forever.
taken civilization dying
A civilization which has taken over the world cannot be said to be dying.
darkness world kind
The world outside existed in a kind of darkness; and we inquired about nothing.
trying situation universal
One must always try to see the truth of a situation - it makes things universal.
simple may trinidad
Trinidad may seem complex, but to anyone who knows it, it is a simple, colonial, philistine society.
army winning men
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.
world bigger grew
I grew up in a small place and left it when I was quite young and entered the bigger world.
trying judgment
Judgment is contained in the act of trying to understand.
nice men literature
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.
should provoking disagreement
Writers should provoke disagreement.
wall ideas decision
I often wonder what would have happened to me if I hadn't made that decision. I suppose I would have sunk. I suppose I would have found some kind of hole and tried to hide or pass. After all, we make ourselves according to the ideas we have of our possibilities. I would have hidden in my hole and been crippled by my sentimentality, doing what I was doing, and doing it well, but always looking for the wailing wall. And I would never have seen the world as the rich place that it is. You wouldn't have seen me here in Africa, doing what I do.