... and it was extraordinary to me that some of the newspapers could have found good words for the butchery on the coast. But people are like that bo… - V. S. Naipaul

It made smuggling easy; but I was nervous of getting involved, because a government that breaks its own laws can also easily break you.

A stranger could drive through Miguel Street and just say “Sum!” because he could see no more. But we who lived there saw our street as a world, where everybody was quite different from everybody else. Mam-man was mad; George was stupid; Big Foot was a bully; hat was an adventurer; Popo was a philosopher; and Morgan was our comedian.

I thought how terrible it would have been if, as could so easily have happened, I had died without knowing this depth of satisfaction, this other person that I had just discovered within myself. It was worth any price, any consequence.