A Quote by V. S. Naipaul
All the things that were read to me by my father were stories about things becoming all right.
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My older brother and I read all the time. My father read, but only things related to religion. One year, he did read a set of stories that was called something like '365 Stories' out loud to us. They followed a family for the year, a page a day. They were about kids with simple problems - like a wheel coming off their bicycle.
There were some coaches, some teammates, some sports psychology people who I could trust and rely on. They were very important to keep me focused on the right things - the things which would be beneficial to me instead of catastrophising things and worrying about things which were not in my control.
When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands. In one of my essays, I remember the kind of things that fascinated me. Weird things, even, about a wizard who lived in Africa and went to China to find a lamp... Fascinating to me because they were about things remote, and almost ethereal.
The thing that probably frustrated me and hurt me the most was when there were inaccurate stories written about me or stories that were written that were trying to imply or infer things that weren't true.
I liked myths. They weren't adult stories and they weren't children stories. They were better than that. They just were. Adult stories never made sense, and they were slow to start. They made me feel like there were secrets, Masonic, mythic secrets, to adulthood. Why didn't adults want to read about Narnia, about secret islands and smugglers and dangerous fairies?
The big breakthrough for me was, once I stopped disliking conservatives and could actually see what they were right about, they showed me a lot of things that liberals were wrong about. But at the same time, I think there are some things that liberals are right about that conservatives have trouble seeing.
One of the things I do take some pride in is that if you had never read an article about my life, if you knew nothing about me, except that my books were being set in front of you to read, and if you were to read those books in sequence, I don't think you would say to yourself, 'Oh my God, something terrible happened to this writer in 1989.'
Coming from a sort of very rigid European type of training to this culture which is just a little more open - a lot more open, and kind of curious, and asking different sorts of questions.Because the problem for me was that the European modernist movement in the '70s was all about right or wrong. Some things were right and you were dealing with the truth, as it were, and then some things were wrong and therefore not allowed.
It's incredible when women tell me that they've read things that I've said or have been inspired by things that I've done. To hear them say that because of something I did, they felt more positive about themselves and or had more of a voice to stand up for things that were right. It's been empowering for me to be able to help other women feel that way about themselves.
The NBA makes you become a bigger version of what you already were. If you were somebody who was not so nice and you came into a lot of money and fame, then you're probably going to abuse that in the wrong way. But if you come into those things and you were doing the right things, then chances are you're going to do more of the right things.
I appreciate the few people who say nice things about me and say, 'Gee, you were right about this,' or, 'You were right about that.' But frankly, I spend my time looking ahead. I've got 23 grandkids, and I'm concerned about what their world is going to be like.
I noticed that some of my deadness was being replaced by an intense feeling about the Greek stories and the Bible stories. They were similar. There was something naked about these stories. Terrible things happened, and then some more terrible things.
After all, when we were children, when things went wrong, there wasn’t much we could do to help put it right. But now we’re adults, now we can. That’s the thing, you see? Look at us, Akira. After all this time, we can finally put things right. Remember, old chap, how we used to play those games? Over and over? How we used to pretend we were detectives searching for my father? Now we’re grown, we can at last put things right.
You read in any war stories - World War II, whatever - that there are many, many heroes. There are the main stories you always hear about, but there are all these other little people that did things that were very important that we don't always know about.
Music and fashion and art - they were the things we were willing to die for. 'Is my hair all right? Have you heard this tune?' They're the things that saved us. They're the things that are saving kids on Nuneaton council estates. There's no other way out.
I had many different assignments and I was doing things that I thought were important... no, I didn't either: I didn't think they were important. But I found out afterwards when I read up on my history that some of the things that I did were quite important.
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