Nobody seemed sure if it was the last ferry. We waited. Time passed, the sky turned pink.
Nine SPEAKING IN TONGUES The following is based on a lecture given at the New York Public Library in December 2008. 1
Maybe every author needs to keep faith with Nabokov, and every reader with Barthes. For how can you write, believing in Barthes? Still, I’m glad I’m not the reader I was in college anymore, and I’ll t...
Jerome said, It's like, a family doesn't work anymore when everyone in it is more miserable than they would be if they were alone, You know?
It’s a shadow life and after a while it gets to you. Nannies, assistants, agents, secretaries, mothers---women are used to it. Men have a lower tolerance.
It was in the shady groves of dictionaries that Jack fell in love.
If the aim is to be liked by more and more people, whatever is unusual about a person gets flattened out.
I remember there was always a girl with a secret, with something furtive and broken in her, and walking through the village with Aimee, entering people’s homes, shaking their hands, accepting their fo...
I once overheard a young white man at a book festival say to his friend, Have you read the new Kureishi? Same old thing—loads of Indian people. To which you want to reply, Have you read the new Franze...
I often wondered: is it some kind of a trade-off? Do others have to lose so we can win? •
I didn’t understand yet that the beauty was part of the boredom.
I am seized by two contradictory feelings: there is so much beauty in the world it is incredible that we are ever miserable for a moment; there is so much shit in the world that it is incredible we ar...
He was no great believer in destiny, Archie, but on reflection it did seem that a special effort of predestination had ensured his life had been picked out for him like a company Christmas present - e...
He peered down the hallway at the shadowy form of Joyce through the glass and scratched his testicles, sadly.
He had her in his heart, but not always in his mind.
Girls either wanted him or wanted to improve him, but most often a combination of the two. They wanted to improve him until he justified the amount they wanted him.
Getting anything out of my husband is like trying to squeeze water out when you're stoned.
For ridding oneself of faith is like boiling sea-water to retrieve the salt – something is gained but something is lost. Though
Even the simplest ideas I’d brought with me did not seem to work
But elegance attracted me. I liked the way it hid pain.