V. S. Naipaul Quotes

V. S. Naipaul (83)

Birth:	17th August, 1932
Nationality:	British, Trinidadian
Profession:	Essayist, Novelist

About

Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad is a Trinidadian-British writer of Indo-Trinidadian heritage of Kanyakubja Brahmin known for his novels focusing on the legacy of the British Empire's colonialism. He has also written works of non-fiction, such as travel writing and essays.

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Today's Anniversary - 22nd May

Births

• 1755 - Tench Coxe
• 1920 - Thomas Gold
• 1965 - Jay Carney
• 1965 - Catie Curtis
• 1979 - Vivian Greene

Deaths

• 1948 - Claude McKay
• 1970 - Joseph Wood Krutch
• 1939 - Ernst Toller
• 2010 - Martin Gardner
• 1985 - Alister Hardy

• I have a very small public.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Public, Small

• I know my father and my mother, but beyond that I cannot go. My ancestry is blurred.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Topics in Mother

• If writers just sit and talk about oppression, they are not going to do much writing.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Oppression

• I’m the kind of writer that people think other people are reading.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Kind

• I really wasn’t equipped to be a writer when I left Oxford. But then I set out to learn. I’ve always had the highest regard for the craft. I’ve always felt it was work.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Really, Always

• I’ve been a free man.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Man, Free

• I profoundly feel that people are letting you down all the time.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Feel

• It’s very attractive to people to be a victim. Instead of having to think out the whole situation, about history and your group and what you are doing… if you begin from the point of view of being a victim, you’ve got it half-made. I mean intellectually.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Attractive

• In England I am not English, in India I am not Indian. I am chained to the 1,000 square miles that is Trinidad; but I will evade that fate yet.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in England

• If a writer doesn’t generate hostility, he is dead.

  V. S. Naipaul

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  Tags in Generate

• If you write a novel alone you sit and you weave a little narrative. And it’s O.K., but it’s of no account.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Novel

• I’m thought to be a tough writer, but I’m really a softie.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Thought

• In England people are very proud of being very stupid.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, England

• I went to India and met some people who had been involved in this guerrilla business, middle-class people who were rather vain and foolish. There was no revolutionary grandeur to it. Nothing.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Met

• My grief is that the publishing world, the book writing world is an extraordinary shoddy, dirty, dingy world.

  V. S. Naipaul

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  Tags in World, Grief

• It is important not to trust people too much.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Topics in Trust

  Tags in People

• Judgment is contained in the act of trying to understand.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Judgement, Act

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

  V. S. Naipaul

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Reputation

• I’ve never abandoned the novel.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Novel

• I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Piece