Africa Is Not A Fun Place, You

I Had No Student Friends To Talk To About Literature. My Tutor Was A Really Nice Man, Very Charming - But He Had No Literary Judgment.

Out 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.

If Writers Just Sit And Talk About Oppression, They Are Not Going To Do Much Writing.

The Past Has To Be Seen To Be Dead; Or The Past Will Kill.

Whenever I Have Had To Write Fiction, I've Always Had To Invent A Character Who Roughly Has My Background.