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.

Next quotes

• V. S. Naipaul:

  It's very attractive to people to be a victim. Instead of having to think out the whole situation,

• V. S. Naipaul:

  To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you h

• V. S. Naipaul:

  Trinidad may seem complex, but to anyone who knows it, it is a simple, colonial, philistine society

• V. S. Naipaul:

  If a writer doesn't generate hostility, he is dead.

• V. S. Naipaul:

  Writers should provoke disagreement.

• V. S. Naipaul:

  Africans need to be kicked, that's the only thing they understand.

• V. S. Naipaul:

  I don't feel I can speak with authority for many other people.

• V. S. Naipaul:

  The ancillary aspect of every British city now is the council estate.

• V. S. Naipaul:

  To be a writer you have to be out in the world, you have to risk yourself in the world, you have to

• V. S. Naipaul:

  I know my father and my mother, but beyond that I cannot go. My ancestry is blurred.