V.S. Naipaul
Trinidadian-British · 1932–2018
Trinidadian-British writer and Nobel laureate whose unflinching examinations of postcolonial societies, displacement, and the writer's solitude produced some of the most penetrating prose of the late twentieth century.
Wikipedia ↗“The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves. Every other lie is eventually forgiven or forgotten, but self-deception accumulates.”
English
“The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.”
English
“Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.”
English
“In a country that is being remade, everyone is a stranger. The only people who can afford to think of the past are those who have the luxury of a stable present.”
English
“It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That is where the mischief starts. That is where everything starts unravelling.”
English
“To see the ordinary, to see what is so common that it has become invisible, needs a stranger's eye. The writer is perpetually that stranger.”
English
“If you come from the New World, every journey is a journey of discovery. The landscape is always new, and you carry within yourself the knowledge that the civilizations you visit are older than your own.”
English
“One always writes comedy at the expense of the other fellow. That is the nature of comedy. When you turn the mirror around and write it on yourself, it becomes something else — it becomes anguish.”
English