“Judgment is contained in the act of trying to understand.” — V. S. Naipaul Quote

Judgment is contained in the act of trying to understand.

In Trinidad, where as new arrivals we were a disadvantaged community, that excluding idea was a kind of protection; it enabled us - for the time being, and only for the time being - to live in our own way and according to our own rules, to live in our own fading India.

I have always moved by intuition alone. I have no system, literary or political. I have no guiding political idea.

In England people are very proud of being very stupid.

If writers just sit and talk about oppression, they are not going to do much writing.

That 1983 general election contained the telltale seeds of eventual Scottish Tory self-destruction.

I sought my father in the world of the black musician, because it contained wisdom, experience, sadness and loneliness. I was not ever interested in the music of boys. From my youngest years, I was interested in the music of men.

I am only one-eighth the writer I might have been had I contained all the fragmented languages of Trinidad.

You can do a small club show and the energy is so contained. Then you play these big festivals, and have 50,000 people waving their hands in the air with you.