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History is unkind to those it abandons, and can be equally unkind to those who make it.

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When 'Midnight's Children' came out, people in the West tended to respond to the fantasy elements in the novel, to praise it in those terms. In India,...more

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..now, seated hunched over paper in a pool of Anglepoised light, I no longer want to be anything except what who I am. Who what am I? My answer: I am ...more

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When you have children, your perspective on the parent-child relationship alters.

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...they all were, in the grip of a huge fantasy: the idea that men would not be judged by who they once were and what they had once done, if they only...more

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Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be...more

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human beings do not perceive things whole; we are not gods but wounded creatures, cracked lenses, capable only of fractured perceptions

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Nobody ever wanted to go to war, but if a war came your way, it might as well be the right war, about the most important things in the world, and you ...more

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Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, i...more

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And eventually in that house where everyone, even the fugitive hiding in the cellar from his faceless enemies, finds his tongue cleaving dryly to the ...more

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Children get food shelter pocket money longholidays and love, all of it apparently free gratis, and most of the little fools think it's a sort of comp...more

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Memory's truth, because memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in ...more

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A man who catches History's eye is thereafter bound to a mistress from whom he will never escape.

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He did not wish to be divine. If there had never been a God, the emperor thought, it might have been easier to work out what goodness was. This busine...more

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Study history, Alleluia. In this century history stopped paying attention to the old psychological orientation of reality. I mean, these days, charact...more