V. S. Naipaul

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

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

It is important not to trust people too much.

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.

I read many things. I read to fill in my knowledge of the world.

What I felt was, if you spend your life just writing fiction, you are going to falsify your material. And the fictional form was going to force you to do things with the material, to dramatize it in a certain way. I thought nonfiction gave one a chance to explore the world, the other world, the world that one didn't know fully.

When I learnt to write I became my own master, I became very strong, and that strength is with me to this very day.

The world is always in movement.

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