212 Quotes by V.S. Naipaul

A celestial camera recorded my every movement, impartially, without judgement or pity. I was marked; I was of interest; I would survive.

A departure can feel like a desertion, a judgement on the place and people left behind.

I became very interested in the Islamic question, and thought I would try to understand it from the roots, ask very simple questions and somehow make a narrative of that discovery.

I forgot my fear. In this way fear, the feeling that everything could at any moment go, became background, a condition of life, something you had to accept.

And how are you, Ferdinand?” “You don’t have to ask. You mustn’t think it’s bad just for you. It’s bad for everybody. That’s the terrible thing. It’s bad for Prosper, bad for the man they gave your shop to, bad for everybody. Nobody’s going anywhere.

And it was strange, I thought, that sorrow lasts and can make a man look forward to death, but the mood of victory fills a moment and then is over.

There may be some part of the world – dead countries, or secure and by-passed ones – where men can cherish the past and think of passing on furniture and china to their heirs. Men can do that perhaps in Sweden or Canada.

Whenever I have had to write fiction, I’ve always had to invent a character who roughly has my background.

We cannot understand all the traits we have inherited. Sometimes we can be strangers to ourselves.