V. S. Naipaul

Trinidad may seem complex, but to anyone who knows it, it is a simple, colonial, philistine society.

Africa has no future.

To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say 'my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn't matter.'

Most people don't know what they spend in every single area, but they know they have a problem in particular areas.

For a while, I became an atheist; now that I'm grown up, though, I'm not hard-edged enough to be an atheist. Even though I live with a flaming atheist, I love going to temple. I love all the rituals.

Although I write to entertain, and try to keep my work free of didacticism, I do have a rather passionate belief in our need to be connected to - and to learn from - history.