V. S. Naipaul Quotes

Childhood is the sleep of reason.

My mother never, ever told me about evilness. She only saw the beautiful things... she wanted to protect me from it.

There is something so amiable in the prejudices of a young mind, that one is sorry to see them give way to the reception of more general opinions.

I'm the whitest guy you will ever meet. The first time I saw an African-American, my dad had to tell me to stop staring.

Despite my mother saying I have been destined to be an actress my whole life, I remember being the kid who grew up not knowing what I wanted to do with my life.

Not knowing anything is the sweetest life.

One's ignorance is one's chief asset.

Most of the time, a kid doesn't think about what he's doing or why. This is the privilege of childhood.

It's really hard to escape where you were brought up. Not that I would ever want to escape it.

It's true that no child is born knowing there's an evil thing. You learn what is ugly.

Everyone thinks you have to grow up to know who you are, but kids already know who we are. The world just beats it out of us.

I'm not a believer in 'what you don't know won't hurt you,' unless it's innocent.

I was born and brought up in South Mumbai. My father, Jagdeep, is a businessman and a Sindhi. My mother is half Brit and half Muslim. I am thus a cocktail of mixed blood. From the time I remember, I wanted to be an actress.

As a young kid, you only know what you know.

Ignorance is not innocence.

Ignorance is learned; innocence is forgotten.

People were people, even if they had four legs and had called themselves names like Dangerous Beans, which is the kind of name you gave yourself if you learned to read before you understood what all the words actually meant.

...and thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.

Innocence dwells with Wisdom, but never with ignorance.

People is themselves when they are children, and not again till they know they'm dying.

Childhood is never troubled with foresight.

Aching familiar in a way that made me wish I was still eight. Eight was before death or divorce or heartbreak. Eight was just eight. Hot dogs and peanut butter, mosquito bites and splinters, bikes and boogie boards. Tangled hair, sunburned shoulders, Judy Blume, in bed by nine thirty.

When I was a boy I was my father.