I often wonder what would have happened to me if I hadn't made that decision. I suppose I would have sunk. I suppose I would have found some kind of hole and tried to hide or pass. After all, we make ourselves according to the ideas we have of our possibilities. I would have hidden in my hole and been crippled by my sentimentality, doing what I was doing, and doing it well, but always looking for the wailing wall. And I would never have seen the world as the rich place that it is. You wouldn't have seen me here in Africa, doing what I do.
V. S. NaipaulIf you write a novel alone you sit and you weave a little narrative. And it's O.K., but it's of no account.
V. S. NaipaulI think when you see so many Hindu temples of the 10th century or earlier disfigured, defaced, you realise that something terrible happened. I feel the civilisation of that closed world was mortally wounded by those invasions the old world is destroyed. That has to be understood. Ancient Hindu India was destroyed.
V. S. NaipaulYou need someone to see what you've done, to read it and to understand it and to appreciate what's gone into it.
V. S. NaipaulIt is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling.
V. S. Naipaul