212 Quotes by V.S. Naipaul

Confronted with her, I shed old fantasies. My body obeyed its new impulses, discovered in itself resources that answered my new need.

A civilization which has taken over the world cannot be said to be dying.

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.

I always knew who I was and where I had come from. I was not looking for a home in other people’s lands.

It made smuggling easy; but I was nervous of getting involved, because a government that breaks its own laws can also easily break you.

How terrible it would have been, at this time, to be without it; to have died among the Tulsis, amid the squalour of that large, disintegrating and indifferent family; to have left Shama and the children among them, in one room; or worse, to have lived without even attempting to lay claim to one’s portion of the earth; to have lived and died as one had been born, unnecessary and unaccommodated.

Neither my father nor grandfather could put dates to their stories. Not because they had forgotten or were confused; the past was simply the past. I remember hearing from my grandfather that he had once shipped a boatful of slaves as a cargo of rubber. He couldn’t tell me when he had done this. It was just there in his memory, floating around, without date or other association, as an unusual event in an uneventful life.

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.

I don’t know why they still building houses,” Mr Biswas said. “Nobody don’t want a house these days. They just want a coal barrel. One coal barrel for one person. Whenever a baby born just get another coal barrel. You wouldn’t see any houses anywhere then. Just a yard with five or six coal barrels standing up in two or three rows.