Quote

The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.

V. S. Naipaul

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

V. S. Naipaul
Died: 2018
Died: August 11
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul
V.S. Naipaul
Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul
Punished
Lies
Truly
Lying
Tell

More quotes by V. S. Naipaul

Image
One must always try to see the truth of a situation - it makes things universal.
V. S. Naipaul
Image
Trinidad may seem complex, but to anyone who knows it, it is a simple, colonial, philistine society.
V. S. Naipaul
Image
Writing has to support itself.
V. S. Naipaul
Image
I really wasn't equipped to be a writer when I left Oxford. But then I set out to learn. I've always had the highest regard for the craft. I've always felt it was work.
V. S. Naipaul
Image
In England I am not English, in India I am not Indian. I am chained to the 1,000 square miles that is Trinidad but I will evade that fate yet.
V. S. Naipaul
Image
I have a very small public.
V. S. Naipaul
Image
The past has to be seen to be dead or the past will kill.
V. S. Naipaul
Image
The family feuds or the village feuds often had to do with an idea of honor. Perhaps it was a peasant idea perhaps this idea of honor is especially important to a society without recourse to law or without confidence in law.
V. S. Naipaul
Image
Home is, I suppose just a child's idea. A house at night, and a lamp in the house. A place to feel safe.
V. S. Naipaul
Image
I'm thought to be a tough writer, but I'm really a softie.
V. S. Naipaul
Image
Great writing can be done in biography, history, art.
V. S. Naipaul
Image
I always knew who I was and where I had come from. I was not looking for a home in other people's lands.
V. S. Naipaul
Image
The writer is all alone.
V. S. Naipaul
Image
That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing - which is never an easy thing to do.
V. S. Naipaul
Image
When I learnt to write I became my own master, I became very strong, and that strength is with me to this very day.
V. S. Naipaul
Image
To read a newspaper for the first time is like coming into a film that has been on for an hour. Newspapers are like serials. To understand them you have to take knowledge to them the knowledge that serves best is the knowledge provided by the newspaper itself.
V. S. Naipaul
Image
If it was Europe that gave us on the coast some idea of our history, it was Europe, I feel, that also introduced us to the lie.
V. S. Naipaul
Image
Africa is not a fun place, you know. A fun place is somewhere that lifts the spirits, that cossets the senses. I don't think that can be said of the Africa I traveled in.
V. S. Naipaul
Image
It's very attractive to people to be a victim. Instead of having to think out the whole situation, about history and your group and what you are doing... if you begin from the point of view of being a victim, you've got it half-made. I mean intellectually.
V. S. Naipaul
Image
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
V. S. Naipaul