Roger Ebert

‘We regulars knew each other. We dated each other. We slept with each other.’

Bruce Chatwin

‘We are having another little change of politics. Nothing more! In these situations one must keep calm. You understand? Calm!’

Lana Asfour

‘Intelligent, unpredictable, occasionally ruthless, Jumblatt shows that he is still very much in the game.’

Humera Afridi

‘Pakistan is a nation of memory keepers. We feed our memories as if they are guests at tea, pay homage to them.’

William Cooper

‘She was fighting for breath, fighting to live, perhaps fighting not to leave us.’

Desmond Barry

‘The atmosphere in the house was thick with my father's depression.’

Laura Bell

‘I find myself walking the high trail between fear and love.’

Heinrich Böll

‘No, it's not easier for you than it was for us: don't let them tell you otherwise.’

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”.’

Bill Buford

‘‘A Literature for Politics' is dedicated to a different set of possibilities - the possibilities of political engagement.’

Henry Davis

‘There is an American literature that is anti-intellectual, apolitical and anti-social.’

Reinaldo Arenas

‘Perfect totalitarian systems have always been in the vanguard: they modify not only the past and the future, but they also abolish the present.’

Héctor Abad

‘A pale-faced, near-sighted urbanite like me is nothing less than handicapped in the heart of the jungle.’

Lana Asfour

‘Women have rights and we’re not going to lose them now.’

Amit Chaudhuri

John Berger

‘The image impressed me when I set eyes upon it for the first time. It was as if it were already familiar, as if, as a child, I had already seen the same man framed in a doorway.’

Mary Benson

‘What first struck me was his courtesy: it never faltered even when some remark by the prosecutor or an action by the police angered him, hardening the expression in his blue eyes.’

John Beckman

‘My every next thought took a melancholy detour through drippy forests of humid emotions, often never to return’

Humera Afridi

‘Until now, I had never experienced a disaster, or witnessed mass suffering and death close up.’

Naomi Alderman

‘Thank you, God,’ said the boys, ‘for not making me a woman.’ ‘Thank you, God,’ said the girls, ‘for making me according to Your will.’

André Brink

‘What is the future of Afrikaners in South Africa?’

Rachel Cusk

‘The gears of life had gone into reverse.’

Robyn Davidson

’Shortly after its publication in 1980 I was surprised to learn that I had written a travel book’.

René Belletto

‘Having told his story, the thief had said goodbye to Agnès, regretfully, she thought’.

Alexander Chee

‘He left for the US while his father was away on business so he couldn’t stop him.’

Diana Athill

‘She thought of herself as a rational woman, but while she could sleep alone in an empty house for night after night without worrying, there were other nights when her nerves twitched like a rabbit's at the least sound.’

Leslie Cockburn

‘Morales’s troubles began in the spring of 1984, when he was indicted for conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine. It was this awkward development that made him particularly receptive to the proposal he received from a delegation of Contras and a CIA man that turned up at his Opa-locka office soon after the bad news.’

Sandra Cisneros

‘She was a prisoner-of-war mother, banging on the bars of her cell all her life.’

Lynn Barber

Lynn Barber

‘The whole meeting seemed completely unreal but then everything at that time seemed unreal, so I said ‘Yes, by all means make the film,’ and went back to the hospital and forgot about her.’

Frederick Bowers

‘What strikes an ex-patriate most about the contemporary British novel is its conformity, its traditional sameness, and its realistically rendered provincialism.’

Ann Beattie

‘Christine’s hair had begun to dry, and she looked different, with her hair down and her glasses on. Her earnestness made her look younger, and took me back to the bar where we’d sat in Pennsylvania years ago.’

Ann Beattie

‘Several times I’ve wanted to title something one thing, but have realized or been persuaded it isn’t a good idea.’

John Biguenet

‘To the inexperienced, hurricane stories always sound like exaggerations.’

Mark Malloch Brown

‘Marcos had, in effect, trapped Washington into appearing to endorse a snap election, and the administration - both State Department and White House - was forced to redefine its position.’

Tim Binding

‘Having come here for a purpose, to trace the fault line of his own history, he searches for the year that saw its inception.’