Naipaul, V.S. In a Free State.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971. Print.

“...the casualties of that freedom.” (10)

“He ignored people who stared at him; when others, responding to his own stare, turned to look at him he swiveled his head away.” (11)

“In the end he went and stood beside a tall blond young man. His instinct had guided him well. The man he had chosen was a Yugoslav who, uhtil the day before, had never been out of Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav was willing to listen. He was baffled by the tramp’s accent but he smiled encouragingly; the the tramp spoke on.” (11)—Does the writer have this information because  he’s overhearing their conversation, or is he somehow omniscient?

“I myself, I think o myself as a citizen of the world.” (11)—Gross.

“He hadn’t wanted company; he wanted only the camouflage and protection of company. The tramp knew he was odd.” (12)

“He looked for company but needed solitude; he looked for attention, and at the same time wanted not to be noticed.” (13)

“...he didn’t become part of the crowd but appeared instead to occupy the centre of a small stage within it.” (14)

“...in pure pleasure at food.” (16)

lassitude (20)

silent competition (25)

“I hoped the plane would crash.” (29)

“But I had never dreamt that this wild race existed in such numbers in Washington and were permitted to roam the streets so freely. O Father, what was this place I had come to?” (30)

“So to some extent Americans have remained to me, as people not quite real, as people temporarily absent from television.” (37)—Great

“I didn’t mind at all. Indeed, in my mood of prayer and repentance, the news was even welcome. And it was with a feeling of release that I watched and heard the city burn that afternoon and watched it burn that night. I watched it burn again and again on television; and I watched it burn in the morning. It burned like a famous city and I didn’t want it to stop burning. I wanted the fire to spread and spread and I wanted everything in the city, even the apartment block, even the apartment, even myself, to be destroyed and consumed. I wanted escape to be impossible. I wanted the very idea of escape to become absurd. At every sign that the burning was going to stop I felt disappointed and let down.” (44)

“They were like people on holiday. I shared their exhilaration.” (45)

“Moving like the front part of a horse...” (48)

“I didn’t know how much to believe of his stories but I liked having to guess about him.” (49)

“I know where i was with him. After the apartment and the green suit and the hubshi woman and the city burning for four days, to be with Priya was to feel safe. For the first time since I had come to Washington I felt safe. (49)

“My mind fastened on to these causes, and the effect of this was that my sadness became like a sickness of the soul.” (51)

“I remember how magical and inexplicable that circle had seemed to me the first time I saw it. Now it seemed so ordinary and tired: the roads, the motor cars, the shops, the trees, the careful policemen: so much part of the waste and futility that was our world. There was no longer a mystery. I felt I knew where everybody had come from and where those cars were going. But I also felt that everybody there felt like me, and that was soothing. I took to going to the circle every day after the lunch rush and sitting until it was time to go back to Priya’s for the dinners.” (56)

“Instead for the first time, I saw something arranged for a television life.” (60)

“Then I looked in the mirror and decided to be free. All that my freedom as brought me is the knowledge that I have a face and have a body, that I must feed this body and clothe this body for a certain number of years. Then it will be over.” (61)

“He is saying that everything around him and inside him is heavy and smooth, very smooth.” (67)

“And inside me is like lead.” (69)

“...when your courage break, it break.” (69)

“We all come out of the same pot, but some people move ahead and some people get left behind. Some people get left behind so far they don’t know and they stop caring.” (71)

“Like a happy man my father. He eduate none of his own children to throw him down.” (76)

“I am just waiting for my father and mother, for Stephen and all of Stephen’s family, for all of them who was there that day, I am just waiting for all of them to die, to bury my shame with them. I hate them.” (77)

“I know it is too much, but for me even that is part of the pleasure. Like when you are sick and thin, you want to get thinner and thinner, just to see how thin you could get.” (90)

“But I can’t bring myself to go down the basement steps. I stand up for a long time looking down at the dustbins and the breakdown fence with two or three hedge plants that grow too big, like little trees, nobody trimming them, the basement window dull with dirt, scraps of wet-and-dried paper and other rubbish scattered about the little garden where somehow a type of grass is still growing.” (98)

“The moon-mad white woman open the front door.” (98)

“If a man could do that, if a man could just leave a life that spoil.” (101)

“I love them. They take my money, they spoil my life, they separate us. But you can’t kill them. O God, show me the enemy. Once you find out who the enemy is, you can kill him. But these people here they confuse me. Who hurt me? Who spoil my life? Tell me who to beat back. I work four years to save my money, I work like a donkey night and day. My brother was to be the educated one, the nice one. And this is how it is ending, in this room, eating with these people. Tell me who to kill.” (107)

“It was something he had defined more than once. But he pretended to fumble for the words. “A breakdown. It’s like watching yourself die. Well, not die. It’s like watching yourself become a ghost.” (124)

“The continent here was gigantically flawed.” (124)

“She was abstracted; her good humour had gone. Her bony forehead curving sharply from the flat, thinning hair below her scarf, had begun to shine above her dark glasses the worry-lines were beginning to show.” (132)—it was nice this description came so late in the introduction of her character: it kept me discovering her.

“Linda said, in her even mystical voice, ‘That’s my favourite hill on this drive. It looks as though some giant hand had clawed down the side.’ /The description was accurate. It was what Bobby himself felt about the hill.” (135)

“‘As Martin says, the only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.” (169)

“They passed more Africans on the hillside. Linda didn’t exclaim  or point them out. Bobby began to search for words that would restore the old mood. Half an our ago he had so many things to say; now nothing new suggested itself. Feeling Linda sitting in reproach beside him, he wished only to go over what he had said to recapture those passages where he had held her.” (170)

“Now, after the troubles across the lake, after independence and the property scare, after the army mutiny, after the white exodus South and the Asian deportations, after all these deaths, the resort no longer had a function.” (180)

...African-blank... (188)

“No voices called to the dogs...‘Theses dongs don’t have any owners. They’ve gone wild.’” (196)—A moment of having one’s thoughts spoken by someone else.

“He opened the back door of the bar and stood for a little with his back to Bobby, his hand behind him on the doorknob.” (202)—Nice positioning.

“Grim-faced, he looked through the paper-backs in the office, war stories, historical romances; made a selection; and settled down in a red-painted wicker chair in the verandah to a sulky read.” (209)

“‘Really, I wasn’t being serious. You weren’t thinking of going back for him?’/It was vaguely, what he had in mind./ ‘That would be too ridiculous.” (217)

“The town had failed to grow, but it still worked.” (219) —This gave the feeling that they had been here before; they were traveling in circles.

“Cactus bloomed and threw black shadows..It was an old, exhausted land. But it was inhabited.” (218)

“Bobby drove slowly, to show that he had nothing to hide.” (221)

“‘Those soldiers knew what they were grinning about. Did you see them grinning? Savages. Fat black savages. I can’t bear it when they grin like that.’” (221)

“‘You know what they say about Africa,” Linda said. ‘You drive these long distances and when you get to where you’re going there’s nothing to do. But I must say I’m beginning to feel it would be nice to see the old compound again.’” (223)

Bobby’s angry speech: (227)— Damn.

“Bobby knew he was losing skin; but still he noticed that the other soldiers remained where they are.” (239)

“But Egypt still had her revolution.” (250)