212 Quotes by V.S. Naipaul

A cat only has itself.

All the things that were read to me by my father were stories about things becoming all right.

Women make up half the world; and I thought I had reached the stage where there was nothing in a woman’s nakedness to surprise me. But I felt now as if I was experiencing anew, and seeing a woman for the first time.

It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That’s where the mischief starts. That’s where everything starts unravelling...

My publisher, who was so good as a taster and editor, when she became a writer, lo and behold, it was all this feminine tosh.

A businessman is someone who buys at ten and is happy to get out at twelve. The other kind of man buys at ten, sees it rise to eighteen and does nothing. He is waiting for it to get to twenty. The beauty of numbers. When it drops to ten again he waits for it to get back to eighteen. When it drops to two he waits for it to get back to ten. Well, it gets back there. But he has wasted a quarter of his life. And all he’s got out of his money is a little mathematical excitement.

When I learnt to write I became my own master, I became very strong, and that strength is with me to this very day.

The past has to be seen to be dead; or the past will kill.

Great writing can be done in biography, history, art.