Racial homogeneity is no guarantor of peace, any more than racial heterogeneity is fated to fail.
Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.
People like us, we can’t be nostalgic. We’ve no home in the past. Nostalgia is a luxury.
People aren’t poor because they make bad choices. They make bad choices because they’re poor.
On cold days a man can see his breath, on a hot day he can’t. On both occasions, the man breathes.
Nobody seemed sure if it was the last ferry. We waited. Time passed, the sky turned pink.
Nobody can cast themselves out.
No one is more ingenious than the poor, wherever you find them. When you are poor every stage has to be thought through. Wealth is the opposite. With wealth you get to be thoughtless. I
Nine SPEAKING IN TONGUES The following is based on a lecture given at the New York Public Library in December 2008. 1
Marcia would love this—sometimes people see visions of her in the churchyard. Marcia’s always having visions. Usually of white Madonnas, though, with blond hair and nice blouses from M & S. . . .
It’s not just a matter of free books. A library is a different kind of social reality (of the three-dimensional kind), which by its very existence teaches a system of values beyond the fiscal.
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 wasn't like the spare rooms of immigrants––packed to the rafters with all that they have ever possessed, no matter how defective or damaged, mountains of odds and ends––that stand testament to the...
It was in the shady groves of dictionaries that Jack fell in love.
Involved. At least that was the right word, Alsana reflected, as she liftes her foot off the pedal, and let the wheel spin a few times alone before coming to a squeaky halt. Sometimes, here in England...
If religion is the opiate of the people, tradition is an even more sinister analgesic, simply because it rarely appears sinister. If religion is a tight band, a throbbing vein, and a needle, tradition...
I wanted to love and to be loved.
Her subject was pride, in all its forms.
Her beauty was not a sharp, cold commodity. She smelled musty, womanly, like a bundle of your favourite clothes... She wore her sexuality with an older woman's ease, and not (as with most of the girls...
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...