But everything of value about me is in my books.

In England I am not English, in India I am not Indian. I am chained to the 1,000 square miles that is Trinidad; but I will evade that fate yet.

It was a good place for getting lost in, a city no one ever knew, a city explored from the neutral heart outward, until after many years, it defined itself into a jumble of clearings separated by stretches of the unknown, through which the narrowest of paths had been cut.

If you write a novel alone you sit and you weave a little narrative. And it's O.K., but it's of no account.

I always knew who I was and where I had come from. I was not looking for a home in other people's lands.

What was past was past. I suppose that was the general attitude.

The past has to be seen to be dead; or the past will kill.