S. Naipaul
S. Naipaul
taken civilization dying
A civilization which has taken over the world cannot be said to be dying.
people speak authority
I don't feel I can speak with authority for many other people.
I have a very small public.
book gone fiction
Each book, intuitively sensed and, in the case of fiction, intuitively worked out, stands on what has gone before, and grows out of it.
reading people giving
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.
home land people
I always knew who I was and where I had come from. I was not looking for a home in other people's lands.
real war boys
Look, boys, it ever strike you that the world not real at all? It ever strike you that we have the only mind in the world and you just thinking up everything else? Like me here, having the only mind in the world, and thinking up you people here, thinking up the war and all the houses and the ships and them in the harbour. That ever cross your mind?
thinking way small-things
Small things start us in new ways of thinking
waiting watches life-is
Life is a helluva thing. You can see trouble coming and you can't do a damn thing to prevent it coming. You just got to sit and watch and wait.
running stupid people
The melancholy thing about the world is that it is full of stupid people; and the world is run for the benefit of the stupid and common.
past culture matter
It has had a calamitous effect on converted peoples. To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say 'my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn't matter'.
sometimes stranger traits
We cannot understand all the traits we have inherited. Sometimes we can be strangers to ourselves.
father thinking people
We made no inquiries about India or about the families people had left behind. When our ways of thinking had changed, and we wished to know, it was too late. I know nothing of the people on my father's side; I know only that some of them came from Nepal
book writing luck
Whatever extra there is in me at any given moment isn't fully formed. I am hardly aware of it; it awaits the next book. It will - with luck - come to me during the actual writing, and it will take me by surprise