naipaul Quotes

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

“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.'”

“Some writers can only deal with childhood experience, because it's complete. For another kind of writer, life goes on, and he's able to keep processing that as well.”

“Home is, I suppose just a child's idea. A house at night, and a lamp in the house. A place to feel safe.”

“What was past was past. I suppose that was the general attitude.”

“The reason is that they define how I have gone about my business. I have trusted to intuition. I did it at the beginning. I do it even now. I have no idea how things might turn out, where in my writing I might go next.”

“I always knew who I was and where I had come from. I was not looking for a home in other people's lands.”

“If you write a novel alone you sit and you weave a little narrative. And it's O.K., but it's of no account.”

“Africa has no future.”

“The writer is all alone.”