The thing I remember from the Letters Page in those antique days was the way the OBs signed off. There was Yours faithfully, Yours sincerely, and I have the honour to be, sir, your obedient servant. B...
The school was in central London, and each day we travelled up to it from our separate boroughs, passing from one system of control to another. Back then, things were plainer: less money, no electroni...
The question of accumulation, Adrian had written. You put money on a horse, it wins, and your winnings go on to the next horse in the next race, and so on. Your winnings accumulate. But do your losses...
The one thing that is very good in life today is death.
The main reason I felt foolish and humiliated was because of - what had I called it to myself, only a few days previously? - 'the eternal hopefulness of the human heart'. And before that, 'the attract...
That afternoon, he handed out a poem with no title, date or author's name, gave us ten minutes to study it, then asked for our responses. 'Shall we start with you, Finn? Put simply, what would you say...
Sometimes you find the panel, but it doesn’t open; sometimes it opens, and your gaze meets nothing but a mouse skeleton. But at least you’ve looked. That’s the real distinction between people: not bet...
Some admit the damage, and try to mitigate it; some spend their lives trying to help others who are damaged; and then there are those whose main concern is to avoid further damage to themselves, at wh...
So a)To what extent might human relationships be expressed in a mathematical or logical formula? And b) If so, what signs might be placed between the integers? Plus and minus, self- evidently; sometim...
She’d been imagining for the last fifteen or more years that if you disappeared, if you abandoned a wife and child, you did so for a better life: more happiness, more sex, more money, more of whatever...
She is the centre of my world. The Armenians believed that Ararat was the centre of the world; but the mountain was divided between three great empires, and the Armenians ended up with none of it, so...
Sejarah bukanlah apa yang terjadi. Sejarah hanyalah apa yang dituturkan sejarawan kepada kita.
Religion decays, the icon remains; a narrative is forgotten, yet its representation still magnetizes (the ignorant eye triumphs – how galling for the informed eye).
Perhaps grief, which destroys all patterns, destroys even more,: the belief that any pattern exists
On our behalf they dreaded the closeness of adolescent friendship, the predatory behaviour of strangers on trains, the lure of the wrong kind of girl. How far their anxieties outran our experience.
Nor did any of them apply to Adrian. In the letter he left for the coroner he had explained his reasoning: that life is a gift bestowed without anyone asking for it; that the thinking person has a phi...
Nobody stops to think about the world anymore. We live in a world where they makechildren pay to see the fish eat. Nowadays even fish are exploited, she thought. Exploited, and then poisoned. The ocea...
Never forget, the most vulnerable spot is down the middle.
Naquele tempo imaginávamo-nos fechados numa espécie de redil, à espera que nos soltassem para a vida. E, quando o momento chegasse, as nossas vidas - e o próprio tempo - acelarariam. Como podíamos sab...
My philosopher friend, who gazed on life and decided that any responsible, thinking individual should have the right to reject this gift that had never been asked for—and whose noble gesture reemphasi...