“The Indians were inside their bodies, he decided, in a way that the British were not. His own flesh impeded his spirit.”

“The Indians were inside their bodies, he decided, in a way that the British were not. His own flesh impeded his spirit.”

“Memory is fiction . . . All memory is a way of reconstructing the past. . . The act of narrating a memory is the act of creating fiction. [Armitstead, Claire. “Damon Galgut talks about his novel In a Strange Room.” The Guardian. 10 September 2010.]”

“Stationery gets me excited because it has an individual character, unlike computers, which may be convenient but are generic and bland.”

“There are many monsters, oh, many!”

“Goldie was a believer in the imperial project, which is to say, in the civilising power of social progress.”

“Of what earthly use were novels? How did they help anybody?”

“A silence followed, while the two men contemplated dying for love.”

“It is always an attractive moment when curiosity takes hold.”

“No emotion was supposed to cross the great divide of class. Affection could erase all hierarchy; in this was the danger, and the delight.”

“I am happy to see you, Maso”

“If I had done this, if I had said that, in the end you are always more tormented by what you didn't do than what you did, actions already performed can always be rationalized in time, the neglected deed might have changed the world.”