‘Memory is what reconciles us to the future. Because she has no past, her future rushes towards her, a bat's wing brushing against her face in the dark.’
It begins the minute Dad leaves the house.
‘Where is George?’
‘He is out now, but he’ll be back soon.’
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘Feelings can be very obscure but numbers never lie.’
Kevin Brazil on metrics, obsession and fitness.
‘An intense workout is an ecstasy of punishment packaged as self-improvement.’
Mary Wellesley on exercise, ritual and Barry’s Bootcamp.
‘I was not good at sports because I would not do sports because I did not have the body for sports because I would not do sports.’
Saba Sams on girlhood, embodiment and avoiding sports.
‘Following United rarely brings me any great joy and most often it depresses me. If I could disengage, I would.’
Jonny Thakkar on Manchester United.
‘I deployed my body against an opponent like a blunt and effective instrument.’
John Patrick McHugh on playing Gaelic football.
‘Back in 1989, we thought the new world opened up by the breaching of the Berlin Wall would be ruled by philosopher kings, dissident heroes and shipyard electricians.’
‘Turia’s room is at the end of an aquamarine-tiled corridor in a mansion in Holland Park, built for a department-store millionaire before the First War and now used as a halfway house for mental patients.’
‘We have everything here, but I always wish I was somewhere else. It's a condition that makes one very difficult to live with.’
Michael Ignatieff interviews Bruce Chatwin.
‘Dinner has been cleared away from the table under the mulberry tree, and she is sitting at the table with a wine glass in her hand watching the light dwindling away behind the purple leaves of the Japanese maple.’
‘I have no house, from time to time I dream of having one, not a holiday home but a house to bury myself in.’
Memoir by Yasmina Reza, translated by Alison L. Strayer.
‘The spotlight grew brighter, there was a movement behind the curtain, and a dwarf with a painted clown’s face stepped into the circle of light.’
