I settled into a contented routine of working, spending my free time with Veronica and, back in my student room, wanking explosively to fantasies of her splayed beneath me or arched above me. Daily in...
I reread this letter several times. I could scarcely deny its authorship or its ugliness. All I could plead was that I had been its author then, but was not its author now. Indeed, I didn’t recognise...
I remember what Old Joe Hun said when arguing with Adrian: that mental states can be inferred from actions. That’s in history—Henry VIII and all that. Whereas in the private life, I think the converse...
I love you.’ For a start, we’d better put these words on a high shelf; in a square box behind glass which we have to break with our elbow; in the bank. We shouldn’t leave them lying around the house l...
I had a friend who trained as a lawyer, then became disenchanted and never practiced. He told me that the one benefit of those wasted years was that he no longer feared either the law or lawyers.
I certainly believe we all suffer damage, one way or another. How could we not, except in a world of perfect parents, siblings, neighbours, companions?
History just burps, and we taste again that raw-onion sandwich it swallowed centuries ago.
History isn’t the lies of the victors, as I once glibly assured Old Joe Hunt; I know that now. It’s more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious nor defeated.
His experience of life had left him with the belief that getting through the first sixteen years or so was fundamentally a question of damage limitation.
Good sex is better than bad sex. Bad sex is better than no sex, except when no sex is better than bad sex. Self-sex is better than no sex, except when no sex is better than self-sex. Sad sex is always...
Freedom consists of conforming to the will of the majority.
Flaubert thought democracy merely a stage in the history of government, and he thought it a typical vanity on our part to assume that it represented the finest, proudest way for men to rule one anothe...
Everyone in the Village, every grown-up—or rather, every middle-aged person—seemed to do crosswords: my parents, their friends, Joan, Gordon Macleod. Everyone apart from Susan. They did either The Tim...
Et combien faut-il de ces petites garces pour faire 2,5kg à votre avis? Je vais vous le dire : il en faut 300, c'est-à-dire, une fois coupées, 600 morceaux baignant dans leur jus, des pépins à ôter 60...
Do the books that writers don't write matter? It's easy to forget them, to assume that the apocryphal bibliography must contain nothing but bad ideas, justly abandoned projects, embarrassing first tho...
Discovering, for example, that as witnesses to your life diminish, there is less corroboration, and therefore less certainty, as to what you are or have been. [p. 65]
Dingen die eenmaal weg zijn, kunnen niet teruggehaald worden, dat wist hij nu wel. Een klap, eenmaal uitgedeeld, kan niet worden ingetrokken. Woorden, eenmaal uitgesproken, kunnen niet onuitgesproken...
Daha önce bir araya getirilmemiş iki kişiyi bir araya getirebilirsiniz. Bu bazen ateşle çalışan bir balona, hidrojenle çalışan bir balonu bağlamanın şu ilk denemesinde olduğu gibi bir şeydir; yere çak...
But time...how time first grounds us and then confounds us. We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What calle...
But the moment I realized that Pomiane was not just sympathetic but deeply on my side came in his recipe for Bœuf à la Ficelle (top rump suspended in boiling water by a string). When it is done, you a...