“The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.”
Source: In a Free State (1971)
Quotes from book
In a Free State
In a Free State is a novel by V.S. Naipaul published in 1971. It won that year's Booker Prize. The plot consists of a framing narrative and three short stories - “One out of Many,” “Tell Me Who to Kill,” and the title story, “In a Free State.” The work is symphonic, with different movements converging towards a common theme; although the theme is not spelled out, it evidently concerns the price of freedom, with analogies implicitly drawn between the three scenarios.
