Even the simplest ideas I’d brought with me did not seem to work
Even if you fear it you’re curious to see it.
Early in the morning, late in the century, Cricklewood Broadway. At 0627 hours on January 1, 1975, Alfred Archibald Jones was dressed in corduroy and sat in a fume-filled Cavalier Musketeer Estate fac...
Do others have to lose so we can win?
Claire spoke often in her poetry of the idea of fittingness: that is, when your chosen pursuit and your ability to achieve it--no matter how small or insignificant both might be--are matched exactly,...
Chuck functions here as a kind of authenticity fetish, allowing Hans (and the reader) the nostalgic pleasure of returning to a narrative time when symbols and mottoes were full of meaning and novels w...
But it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears – dissoluti...
But first the endgames. Because it seems that no matter what you think of them, they must be played, even if, like the independence of India or Jamaica, like the signing of peace treaties or the docki...
But elegance attracted me. I liked the way it hid pain. One
But asking why rappers always talk about their stuff is like asking why Milton is forever listing the attributes of heavenly armies. Because boasting is a formal condition of the epic form.
But as the prey evolves (and we are prey to the Mad who are pursuing us, desperate to impart their own brand of truth to the hapless commuter) so does the hunter, and the true professionals begin to t...
But I was so much older then, sang Archie mischievously, quoting a ten-year-old Dylan track, arching his head round the door, I’m younger than that now.
Big words. But how fragile is Clara’s atheism! Like one of those tiny glass doves Hortense keeps in the lounge cabinet – a breath would knock it over.
Because immigrants have always been particularly prone to repetition - it's something to do with that experience of moving from West to East or East to West or from island to island. Even when you arr...
Because homeland is one of the magical fantasy words like unicorn and soul and infinity that have now passed into the language. And the particular magic of homeland, its particular spell over irie, wa...
Archie's marriage felt like buying a pair of shoes, taking them home, and finding they don't fit.
Archie says -Science- the same way he says -Modern-, as if someone has lent him the words and made him swear not to break them.
And then you begin to give up the very idea of belonging. Suddenly this thing, this belonging, it seems some long, dirty lie... and I begin to believe that birthplaces are accidents, that everything i...
A tap runs fast the first time you switch it on.
The end is simply the beginning of an even longer story.