What does it mean for a community to edit itself like this, to so spurn the past – or perhaps fear it – that the slate must be wiped clean for each new generation? What self-hatred does this betray?
Time doesn't click on and on at the stroke. It comes and goes in waves and folds like water; it flutters and sifts like dust, rises, billows, falls back on itself. When a wave breaks, the water is not...
Rare as rocking-horse turds, these days, feeling halfway to decent, with barely a sick twinge, and he was damned if he’d waste
It's funny, but you never really think much about breathing. Until it's all you ever think about.
I was in my thirties before I learnt that I too would prefer not to see what I could no longer have
I invested them with a bogus nobility. To a suburban kid they seemed so special, enduring, wild and stiff-necked, in amongst the ancient rocks and gnarled trees, and while it was true enough they carr...
For the first time in my life I know what I want and I have what it takes to get me there. If you never experienced that I feel sorry for you. But it wasn’t always like this. I have been through fire...
Every vegetable, every bit of protein on the list had a provenance more complex than a minor Rembrandt.
Sort of worked, our arrangement. Before I couldna seen the sense in it. But two of us getting meat and wood, two of us keeping a look out, it was more efficient that one bloke faffing about on his own...
When I hit the bitumen and get that smooth grey rumble going under me everything’s hell different. Like I’m in a fresh new world all slick and flat and easy. Even with the engine working up a howl and...
We rise to a challenge and set a course. We take a decision. You put your mind to something. Just deciding to do it gets you halfway there. Daring to try.
Surviving is the strongest memory I have; the sense of having walked on water.
Keely's pulse quickened. A stab of apprehension. He was the same at any live performance, suddenly anxious for the players. So stupid; these people were professional muscicians. But the way his throat...
I have never been a violent man. Just a little creepy, it seems.
I couldn't take my eyes from those plumes of spray, the churning shards of light. Was this what the old man was afraid of? I tried to think of poor dead Snowy Muir but death was hard to imagine when y...
Everything was normal and right. There were dishes in the sink and the sound of kids playing in the street and the trains passing smutty wind. Something had settled over the kitchen. Rose kept the col...
Being afreaid proves you're alive and awake.
And you can't help but worry for them, love them, want for them - those who go on down the close, foetid galleries of time and space without you.
You look great, he said. Oh, get fucked, she said, grinning.
Wasted and wounded It ain’t what the moon did I got what I paid for now See you tomorrow Hey Frank can I borrow A couple of bucks from you To go Waltzing Matilda Waltzing Matilda You’ll go waltzing Ma...