Before comfort had been squeezed out of the hard land, like blood out of stone. - V. S. Naipaul

It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling...

Me black and beautiful’ was the first thing she taught me. Then she pointed to the policeman with the gun outside and taught me: ‘He pig.

Women make up half the world; and I thought I had reached the stage where there was nothing in a woman’s nakedness to surprise me. But I felt now as if I was experiencing anew, and seeing a woman for the first time.