Naipaul, V. S. (Vidiadhar Surajprasad), 1932-2018

"Lover - I can't help it; it is two and a half hours since I spoke to you on the telephone, and I am wet, wet; running wet all the time, and the juice of my love goes to waste, unregarded. Things become precious - things like a weeping god - only when other people find them so; they exist only when they have meaning for someone else, and for me that someone else is you. I alternate between the most violent moods and the most tender; and in both moods I wish you to be overwhelmed by me..."

"Margaret, this was the way the god stiffened when he felt you close this morning - your letter had arrived. I put him flat on this sheet of paper and outlined him in brio. He probably goes on for an inch or two, but that was not easy to outline..."

"Exactly one week ago, at Villejos, I was looking through the Folio Society catalogue and choosing four books. I arrive to find a catalogue from the Folio Society and a regret, for next year's or quarter's Folio, to choose from four books and do it in 100 words: they will pay me by giving me the four books I choose..."

"A week ago, lover, we were getting ready to go to the Biela. A day of grief for you today, the melancholy feeling that I can't reach out and touch you or go out into the streets with you. So odd, but in retrospect the days at La Cumbre[?] are all sunny, and we [?] the bus to the town and stop and drink in the little bar..."

"I asked Francis to send you the magazines with the Malik. I wonder whether you get them - I hope they were sent by air mail..."

"Margaret with the wounded air, from Vidia with the shrunken god: I rushed off a little note to you with a photo-copy of the Conrad some days ago, and didnt[sic] really acknowledge your letter. I am amazed you didn't know that Finita and Josefina were lovers; I would have thought that was obvious, so obvious from appearances, from Finita's especially..."

"Lover, fulfilment, my miracle (because it is also yours), Margaret: I loved [making it?] to you yesterday (no, not yesterday, today, just two hours ago_. I telephoned to hear you say that you loved me and to tell you that I love you; and to be in touch. I am very tired now, so you must forgive me talking uncertainly..."

"This has been my first letter to you for five and a half years. I write it to let you know that I am quite lost without you (I feel less myself); that I realize now that you have given me an idea of myself that I need and that I have been thinking in the last two months of making the big step and legitimizing the whole thing..."

"I was sick about the pearl necklace; and am even sicker thinking about the coon who stole it."

"Night after night I compare these hymns to you; and I know that in the morning the words will mock me, reminding me of what I haven't had. I will come to you again and soon; you will receive me. You will lie beneath me; I will enter you on that ridge inside your red moist mouth down below..."