A complying memory has obliterated many of them and edited my childhood down to a brief cinematic blur. - V. S. Naipaul

Whereas before he had waited for me to ask questions, now it was he who put up little ideas, little debating points, as though he wanted to get a discussion going.

Look, boys, it ever strike you that the world not real at all? It ever strike you that we have the only mind in the world and you just thinking up everything else? Like me here, having the only mind in the world, and thinking up you people here, thinking up the war and all the houses and the ships and them in the harbour. That ever cross your mind?

I shared in the boom. I was energetic in my own modest way. But I was also restless. You so quickly get used to peace. It is like being well – you take it for granted, and forget that when you were ill to be well again had seemed everything. And with peace and the boom I began to see the town as ordinary, for the first time.