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
people important too-much
It is important not to trust people too much.
writing oppression ifs
If writers just sit and talk about oppression, they are not going to do much writing.
london world lost
I came to London. It had become the center of my world and I had worked hard to come to it. And I was lost.
people feels
I profoundly feel that people are letting you down all the time.
eye people needs
I could meet dreadful people and end up seeing the world through their eyes, seeing their frailties, their needs.
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.
reading thinking people
I am the kind of writer that people think other people are reading.
grief dirty book
My grief is that the publishing world, the book writing world is an extraordinary shoddy, dirty, dingy world.
editors feminine publishers
My publisher, who was so good as a taster and editor, when she became a writer, lo and behold, it was all this feminine tosh.
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.
waiting watches life-is
Life is a helluva thing. You can see trouble coming and you can't do a damn thing to prevent it coming. You just got to sit and watch and wait.
writing documentation details
All the details of the life and the quirks and the friendships can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain. No amount of documentation, however fascinating, can take us there.
father thinking people
We made no inquiries about India or about the families people had left behind. When our ways of thinking had changed, and we wished to know, it was too late. I know nothing of the people on my father's side; I know only that some of them came from Nepal