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"As a child I knew almost nothing, nothing beyond what I had picked up in my grandmother's house. All children, I suppose, come into the world like that, not knowing who they are."
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"But in the real world, you couldnt really just split a family down the middle, mom on one side, dad the other, with the child equally divided between. It was like when you ripped a piece of paper into two: no matter how you tried, the seams never fit exactly right again. It was what you couldn't see, those tiniest of pieces, that were lost in the severing, and their absence kept everything from being complete."

"LEONATOWell, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband.BEATRICENot till God make men of some other metal than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a pierce of valiant dust? to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No, uncle, I'll none: Adam's sons are my brethren; and, truly, I hold it a sin to match in my kindred."

"Sometimes we're so concerned about giving our children what we never had growing up, we neglect to give them what we did have growing up."

"Mothers care in volumes of tears and earnestness of prayers and a depth of emotion others cannot fathom."

"Things that remind me of Mother are these:the truth 'mid deception, a warm summer breeze,the calm within chaos, a stitch in a rip,a comforting blanket, the smile on her lip,an ocean of love in a heart big as whales,the morals in everyday stories she tells,a wink amid laughter, the wisdom in books,the peace in humility, beauty in looks,the light and the life in a ray of the sun,the hard work accomplished disguised as pure fun,concern in a handclasp, encouragement too,the hope in a clear morning sky azure blue,the power in prayers uttered soft and sincere,the faith in a promise, and joy in a tear.These things all attest to the wonder and graceof my precious mother, none else could replace."

"Family isn't something that's supposed to be static, or set. People marry in, divorce out. They're born, they die. It's always evolving, turning into something else."

"He who loses his mother loses a pure soul who blesses and guards him constantly."

"All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
Explore more quotes by V. S. Naipaul


"Each book, intuitively sensed and, in the case of fiction, intuitively worked out, stands on what has gone before, and grows out of it. I feel that at any stage of my literary career it could have been said that the last book contained all the others."


"Whatever extra there is in me at any given moment isn't fully formed. I am hardly aware of it; it awaits the next book. It will - with luck - come to me during the actual writing, and it will take me by surprise."


"The reason is that they define how I have gone about my business. I have trusted to intuition. I did it at the beginning. I do it even now. I have no idea how things might turn out, where in my writing I might go next."


"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."


"In Trinidad, where as new arrivals we were a disadvantaged community, that excluding idea was a kind of protection; it enabled us - for the time being, and only for the time being - to live in our own way and according to our own rules, to live in our own fading India."
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