Notes on Painting, Tuning in to the Multimedia Age, p. 96.
“I know too well what I am going to say. I know it too well before writing.”
Atrophied Preface
Naked Lunch (1959)
“I only write when I am inspired. Fortunately I am inspired at 9 o'clock every morning.”
“I am not at all in a humor for writing; I must write on till I am.”
Fiction, "The Fifth Head of Cerberus", Orbit 10 (1972)
“That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing.”
"Two Worlds," Nobel lecture (7 December 2001) http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2001/naipaul-lecture-e.html
Context: I have told people who ask for lectures that I have no lecture to give. And that is true. It might seem strange that a man who has dealt in words and emotions and ideas for nearly fifty years shouldn't have a few to spare, so to speak. But everything of value about me is in my books. Whatever extra there is in me at any given moment isn't fully formed. I am hardly aware of it; it awaits the next book. It will — with luck — come to me during the actual writing, and it will take me by surprise. That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing.
“Life is boring. I have experiences now only when I am writing.”
Montauk (1975)
