Columns

My Commonplace Book (a diary of excerpts copied from printed books, with comments added by the reader.)

By Dorothy Bryant
Tuesday November 22, 2011 - 09:38:00 AM

Never give anyone a second chance. When people have let you down, you can be sure they will do it again.— V. S. Naipaul, interviewed in the New Yorker 2004. 

V. S. Naipaul is the prolific, versatile, famous, prize-winning (including a Nobel) writer, who is also famous for his for his bluntly-stated negative attitude toward human beings (especially women). Yet, he is essential reading because he so often asserts unpleasant truths we would rather not believe, but (as in the quotation above) too often have proven by our own experience. 

(Send the Berkeley Daily Planet a page from your own Commonplace Book)