Explore Essays and memoir
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Trouble at the Waterworks
Edward Blishen
‘Old age is a sustained process of injury. You are being very distinctly shot at.’
According to Your Will
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.’
An Irrelevant Parochialism
Frederick Bowers
‘What strikes an ex-patriate most about the contemporary British novel is its conformity, its traditional sameness, and its realistically rendered provincialism.’
The Second Night is Ending
Mikail Eldin
‘This winter and this forest will leave you with a shiver in your heart, which will appear whenever you see a winter forest, even in pictures.’
More Fat Girls in Des Moines
Bill Bryson
‘I didn't really expect my grandparents to be waiting for me at the gate, on account of them both having been dead for many years.’
Héctor Abad | First Sentence
Héctor Abad
‘Ever since this happened to me, I haven’t really believed in free will.’
This July
Wiam El-Tamami
‘It felt as though time would fall off a cliff on Sunday. We jokingly called it The End of the World.’
Blind Spot
Teju Cole
‘I heard faint noises, the occasional car going down another street, a voice lightly thrown from its unseen body, the hum of distant machines, and the sound of my own breathing as I put one foot in.’
The Ribbon of Valour
Hal Crowther
‘I'm sure there were defenders of raw meat and dark caves who lodged similar objections against the discovery of fire.’
Necessary Daemons
Madison Smartt Bell
‘I have claimed, on suitable occasions, that my work is dictated to me by daemons, being careful to include that extra ‘a,’ so that the daemons I’m invoking may seem at least morally neutral, not out and out evil as single ‘e’ demons are mostly considered to be.’
Men as Chickens
Geoffrey Beattie
‘She had offered four men £2,500 each to live like battery hens for a week.’
