In our island myth this was the prescribed end of marriages like mine: the wife goes off with someone from the Cercle Sportif, outside whose gates at night the willingly betrayed husband waits in his motorcar. The circumstances were slightly.
V. S. NaipaulAn autobiography can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies: it reveals the writer totally.
V. S. NaipaulOne isnโt born oneโs self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other peopleโs ideas โ and you have to work through it all.
V. S. NaipaulOut of its squalor and human decay, its eruptions of butchery, India produced so many people of grace and beauty, ruled by elaborate courtesy. Producing too much life, it denied the value of life; yet it permitted a unique human development to so many. Nowhere were people so heightened, rounded and individualistic; nowhere did they offer themselves so fully and with such assurance. To know Indians was to take a delight in people as people; every encounter was an adventure. I did not want India to sink [out of my memory]; the mere thought was painful.
V. S. Naipaul