It has had a calamitous effect on converted peoples. 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'. — V. S. Naipaul Copy Share Image
In Trinidad, where as new arrivals we were a disadvantaged community, that excluding idea was a kind of protection; it enabled us - for… — V. S. Naipaul Copy Share Image
Many writers tend to write summing-up books at the end of their lives. — V. S. Naipaul Copy Share Image
If you decide to move to another country and to live within its laws you don't express your disregard for the essence of the… — V. S. Naipaul Copy Share Image
To this day, if you ask me how I became a writer, I cannot give you an answer. To this day, if you ask… — V. S. Naipaul Copy Share Image
In our island myth this was the prescribed end of marriages like mine: the wife goes off with someone from the Cercle Sportif, outside… — V. S. Naipaul Copy Share Image
In the beginning, before the arrival of the white men, I had considered myself neutral. I had wanted neither side to win, neither the… — V. S. Naipaul Copy Share Image
