Scouting for Boys
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The Ivory Acrobat
Don DeLillo
‘She lay in a kind of timeless drift, a mindwork spiral, carried on half-formed thoughts. She passed into a false sleep and then was listening again. She opened her eyes.’
Means of Transport
John Berger
‘Use these photos as means of transport. Ride on them. No passes needed. Go close. Imprudently close. They leave every minute.’
John Berger on images of violent dispossession from South Africa and Lesotho.
Murderer in the Family
Rian Malan
‘'m just going to lay this all upon you and trust that you are a visionary reader, because the grand design, such as it is, is going to be very hard for you to see.’
The Albatross
Bruce Chatwin
‘On the south side of the Beagle Channel is the Chilean island of Navarino, with its naval base at Puerto Williams. I hoped to walk around the coast and get a glimpse of Hermit Island, which is the breeding colony of the black-browed Albatross.’
Inside Intelligence
Anthony Cavendish
‘Good heavens, old boy! It isn't the Russians we worry about; it's the British public that we don't want to know about it.’
Fortune
Tobias Wolff
‘We’d left Sarasota in the dead of summer, right after my tenth birthday, and headed west under low flickering skies that turned black and exploded and cleared just long enough to leave the air gauzy with steam.’
A Letter to Our Son
Peter Carey
‘We talked about Alison’s blood. We asked her what she thought this mystery could be. Really what we wanted was to be told that everything was OK. There was a look on Alison's face when she asked. I cannot describe it, but it was not a face seeking medical “facts”.’
Kwangju and After
James Fenton
‘Some people said they were not ‘with’ the students. They were not in favour of the use of arms. But they were of one voice in saying that the students were their sons, and that if the army came in the students would be put to death. That was why they kept saying: “Tell the truth about us.”’
James Fenton on the Gwanju massacre.
Chiloé
Bruce Chatwin
‘The island of Chiloé is celebrated for its black storms and black soil, its thickets of fuchsia and bamboo, its Jesuit churches and the golden hands of its woodcarvers.’
Immigrant
Nik Cohn
‘In every other respect – colour, country, creed – these people might have nothing in common. Some were convicted criminals, others sought political asylum, still others had overstayed their visas or were accused of Green Card frauds, and a few might even be mistakes, the victims of computer or human error. But this one bond was absolute.’
The Apprentice
E. L. Doctorow
‘And there was no resistance, I saw a movement of black bulk, that was all, and all I heard was maybe the sound someone makes who is frightened and has a hand not his own over his mouth, the doors slammed and the car was humming and gone and the boat was already opening up water between itself and the slip before a thin minute had passed.’
Victory Mills
Mona Simpson
‘I have driven a car on acid, carried my mother drunk upstairs and slept with numerous men and one woman to no consequence.’
The Business
Jay McInerney
‘So I said to Dalton, “No, no, I meant–what's the secret of a great screenplay?” And he said, “It's very simple, Lex. Three acts–first act, get man up tree, second act, shake a stick at him, third act, get him down from the tree.”’
Meeting Gorbachev
Václav Havel
‘By now the Glasnost Tsar has reached the spot where I am standing. He is rather short and stocky, a cuddly ball-like figure hemmed in by his gigantic bodyguards, giving the impression of someone shy and helpless.’
Cyclone
Jonathan Raban
‘It began as a vacuum in the atmosphere, far out over the Atlantic. Trying to fill itself, it set up a spinning mass of air, like a plughole sucking water from a bath; but the faster the winds blew, the more the vacuum deepened.’
Fat Girls in Des Moines
Bill Bryson
‘When I was growing up I used to think that the best thing about coming from Des Moines was that it meant you didn't come from anywhere else in Iowa. By Iowa standards, Des Moines is a Mecca of cosmopolitanism, a dynamic hub of wealth and education, where people wear three-piece suits and dark socks, often simultaneously.’
The Retreat from Galilee
Anton Shammas
‘Our village is built on the ruins of the Crusader castle of Fassove, which was built on the ruins of Mifshata, the Jewish village that had been settled after the destruction of the Second Temple by a group of deviant priests, and which the villagers, as a sort of Jewish-Crusader compromise, called Fassu-ta.’
A Guide to the City of Beirut
Fawwaz Traboulsi
‘In Beirut, a well reveals layer upon layer, generation after generation, of ruins.’
The Thirties
Martha Gellhorn
Martha Gellhorn on Paris in the thirties, cadging bed and breakfast off H.G. Wells and living in the White House with the Roosevelts.
Essex
Norman Lewis
‘Essex is the ugliest county. I only went there to be able to work in peace and quiet and get away from the settlers from London south of the river.’
Feet
Seamus Deane
‘That was my first death. When the priest tossed the first three shovelfuls of clay on to the coffin, the clattering sound seemed to ring all over the hillside graveyard and my father's face moved sideways as if he had been struck.’
Orion
Jeanette Winterson
‘Every 200,000 years or so, the individual stars within each constellation shift position. That is, they are shifting all the time, but more subtly than any tracker dog of ours can follow. One day, if the earth has not voluntarily opted out of the solar system, we will wake up to a new heaven whose dome will again confound us.’
Among Chickens
Jonathan Miller
‘The joke makes us aware that we have complex notions about those things for which we can be praised and blamed, those things which could be said to be voluntary or involuntary, those things which we can do half-heartedly, those things which we do flat out and those things we can't help.’
In Pursuit of Guzmán
Nicholas Shakespeare
‘They called him Presidente Gonzalo, but his name was Abimael Guzmán. I had come to Lima to find Guzmán, although I knew I wouldn't succeed.’
J. D. Salinger versus Random House, Inc.
Ian Hamilton
‘In New York, Salinger was required to formalize his accusations. In his affidavit, he described himself as an “author of some renown” who had “elected, for personal reasons, to leave the public spotlight entirely”.’
The Miracle at Ballinspittle
T. Coraghessan Boyle
‘This statue, alone among all the myriad three-foot-high snotgreen likenesses of the Virgin cast in plaster by Finbarr Finnegan & Sons, Cork City, was seen one grim March afternoon some years back to move its limbs ever so slightly, as if seized suddenly by the need of a good sinew-cracking stretch.’
A Cock Fight
Charles Nicholl
‘And now, the night before the fight, with the moon high and nearing the full, came the final preparation: we were taking him to Auguste.’
Crash
Peregrine Hodson
‘The thought of selling the shares seems disrespectful, like burning the letters of the dead. However, the market has been softening over the last two months and people are beginning to say that the bull market is over.’
Cricket in Samoa
Gavin Young
‘Balls flew towards the beach or into dense jungle. Enthusiastic young fielders tumbled head over heels in the morning glories. Village elders, large, heavy-breasted, critical men, lay in the shade on cushions discussing the course of play like contented sea lions on their favourite rocks.’
Events in the Skies
Doris Lessing
‘He told me that when he remembered his childhood that aeroplane was in the sky.’
With Your Tongue Down My Throat
Hanif Kureishi
‘“Your father had a wife in India,” Ma says, wincing every time she says father.’
