212 Quotes by V.S. Naipaul

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

What was past was past. I suppose that was the general attitude.

But I thought: That is the sound of war. That sound of a steady, grinding machine made me think of guns; and then I thought of the crazed and half-starved village people against whom the guns were going to be used, people whose rags were already the colour of ashes. This was the anxiety of a moment of wakefulness; I fell asleep again. When.

How we flounder when emotion overtakes us.

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

I could meet dreadful people and end up seeing the world through their eyes, seeing their frailties, their needs.

This is unusual for me. I have given readings and not lectures. I have told people who ask for lectures that I have no lecture to give. And that is true.

He spoke about Africa in an unusual way. He spoke of Africa as though Africa was a sick child and he was the parent.

Argentine political life is like the life of an ant community or an African forest tribe: full of events, full of crisis and deaths, but life is always cyclical, and the year ends as it begins.