" But the English have become such a pitiful lot these days, with hardly any idea what to do with themselves now that they no longer have one quarter of the earth's human population bowing and scraping before them. They don't seem to know that this empire business was all wrong and they should, at least, be wearing sackcloth and ashed in token penance of the wrongs committed, the irrevocableness of their bad deeds, for no natural disaster imaginable could equal the harm they did . . . The English hate each other and they hate England, and the reason they are so miserable now is that they have no place else to go and nobody else to feel better than. "

― Jamaica Kincaid , A Small Place