When we land at a place like London Airport we are concerned only not to appear foolish. It is more beautiful and more complex than anything we could… - V. S. Naipaul

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When we land at a place like London Airport we are concerned only not to appear foolish. It is more beautiful and more complex than anything we could have dreamed of, but we are concerned only to let people see that we can manage and we are not overawed. We might even pretend that we had expected better. That is the nature of our stupidity and incompetence. And that was how I spent my time at the university in England, not being overawed, always being slightly disappointed, understanding nothing, accepting everything, getting nothing. I saw and understood so little that even at the end of my time at the university I could distinguish buildings only by their size, and I was hardly aware of the passing of the seasons. And yet I was an intelligent man and could cram for examinations.

English
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About V. S. Naipaul

Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (17 August 1932 - 11 August 2018) was a British writer of Indo-Nepalese descent born and raised in Trinidad. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Birth Name: Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul
Alternative Names: V.S. Naipaul Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul
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I have to stress that I was traveling in the non-Arab Muslim world. Islam began as an Arab religion; it spread as an Arab empire. In Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia—the countries of my itinerary—I was traveling, therefore, among people who had been converted to what was an alien faith. I was traveling among people who had to make a double adjustment—an adjustment to the European empires of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and an earlier adjustment to the Arab faith. You might almost say that I was among people who had been doubly colonized, doubly removed from themselves.

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