In fact, the only person who seemed to examine the event with some astonishment was myself, who marvelled that such a turn in my life could occur so … - V. S. Naipaul

If a writer doesn’t generate hostility, he is dead.

Small things start us in new ways of thinking

When we had come no one could tell me. We were not that kind of people. We simply lived; we did what was expected of us, what we had seen the previous generation do. We never asked why; we never recorded. We felt in our bones that we were a very old people; but we seemed to have no means of gauging the passing of time. Neither my father nor my grandfather could put dates to their stories. Not because they had forgotten or were confused; the past was simply the past.