His attitude, since he had begun to feel towards a character, was that I owed him something, simply because I seemed willing to help. - V. S. Naipaul

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.

His ignorance seemed to widen with everything he read.

Perhaps he had made Africa his subject because he had come to Africa and because he was a scholar, used to working with papers, and had found this place full of new papers.