Literary Occasions: Essays
A source page for quotes linked to V. S. Naipaul.
“Ignorant people in preppy clothes are more dangerous to America than oil embargoes.”
“I'm my own writer. My material means I'm entirely separate.”
“People come and go all the time; the world has always been in movement.”
“The past has to be seen to be dead; or the past will kill.”
“One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria.”
“I profoundly feel that people are letting you down all the time.”
“I am the kind of writer that people think other people are reading.”
“I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not.”
“I will say I am the sum of my books.”
“If writers just sit and talk about oppression, they are not going to do much writing.”
“Africans need to be kicked, that's the only thing they understand.”
“I grew up in a small place and left it when I was quite young and entered the bigger world.”
“If ever you wish to meet intellectual frauds in quantity, go to Paris.”
“The ancillary aspect of every British city now is the council estate.”
“The biography of a writer - or even the autobiography - will always have this incompleteness.”