Human Beings

Show me any motor or electrical machine. I can tell you about the behaviour of this machine. An induction motor is an induction motor. It doesn’t matter where it comes from. I can tell you about it completely. When I get two babies, each baby has its own individual behaviour. You cannot treat them like machines. Human beings are always enigmatic to me, always interesting.

V.S. Naipaul, Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples (London: Abacus, 2001; 1998), p. 18.