132 Quotes by V. S. Naipaul

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.

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

Where jargon turns living issues into abstractions, and where jargon ends by competing with jargon, people don't have causes. They only have enemies.

The biography of a writer - or even the autobiography - will always have this incompleteness.

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.

Some writers can only deal with childhood experience, because it's complete. For another kind of writer, life goes on, and he's able to keep processing that as well.

Home is, I suppose just a child's idea. A house at night, and a lamp in the house. A place to feel safe.

Life doesn't have a neat beginning and a tidy end; life is always going on. You should begin in the middle and end in the middle, and it should be all there.

My life is short. I can't listen to banality.