V. S. Naipaul Quotes

A man is sometimes as different from himself as he is from others.

I am as mysterious to myself as I am mysterious to others.

To every man in the world there is one person of whom he knows little: whom he would never recognize if he met him walking down the street, whose motives are a mystery to him. That is himself.

I am infinitely strange to myself.

I think we're all mysteries to ourselves.

Man is a universe within himself.

I am a mystery to myself.

What am I? Do I know? I am a man: quite simply, a 'breather.'

Coming to terms with our true natures and who we really are has always been a fascination to humans. I know it fascinates me.

What interests me are the complexities and contradictions and struggles and joys of messy human beings.

So few humans seem to fully exist themselves that I wonder if all this endless speculation and haggling about God is really an exploration of a more interesting and embarrassing question about ourselves.

I learned quite early on in life that we are all two people. And one of those people none of us will ever know.

Each person is an enigma. You're a puzzle not only to yourself but also to everyone else, and the great mystery of our time is how we penetrate this puzzle.

Science, literature, and common sense tell us that the self is a fickle thing, subject to revision in real time, and that the chasm that exists between any two people exists inside each and every one of us.

I think people have a lot of layers. I know I do in particular.

People remain unknowable to us, even people that we're very close to. And I think the same goes for our own selves.

I think my thing is that... I don't know. And that's why I don't wanna sing about 'This is me, this is who I am' because, like, even the question, 'Tell me about yourself' - what are you supposed to say? 'Ooh, I'm a happy girl, but I'm sad, too'? People are so complex.

Selfness is an essential fact of life. The thought of nonselfness, precise sameness is terrifying.

This very heart which is mine will forever remain indefinable to me. Between the certainty I have of my existence and the content I try to give to that assurance, the gap will never be filled. Forever I shall be a stranger to myself.

We all believe that we are a certain kind of person, but we never know until we do something that proves otherwise, or until we die.

We are not always even what we are most.

I have never known a greater miracle, or monster, than myself.

I am learning to see. I don't know why it is, but everything enters me more deeply and doesn't stop where it once used to. I have an interior that I never knew of... What's the use of telling someone that I am changing? If I'm changing, I am no longer who I was; and if I am something else, it's obvious that I have no acquaintances. And I can't possibly write to strangers.

It is human defect — to try to know oneself by the self of another.

In fact, I don't even know myself. That is the big secret of the story. That there is no story.