Tao Lin

‘The editor of the Oregonian’s books section (Powell’s employees later confirmed to me that it was him, but they could be wrong) attended, I think, and asked in what sounded to me like an accusatory, non-curious voice if I was on drugs.’

Gavin Francis

‘I came to the Himalayas not because of a dream of mountains or of animals, but because of a map.’

Chinelo Okparanta

‘The cultural presentations of the students – that juxtaposition of old and new world, of tradition and modernity.’

Issue 124

Siddartha Mukherjee

‘The point of lucid death,’ he said, ‘is to retain the consciousness of dying, while blunting the agony of it.’

Issue 124

Robert Macfarlane

‘There are many ways to die underground.’

Issue 124

David Searcy

‘The coyote skull is on the table.’

Issue 124

Héctor Abad

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

Issue 124

A Yi

‘I no longer feared that she would entrap me; my heart would not soften.’

Haruki Murakami

‘What I’m talking about is a different sea, and different mountains.’ Haruki Murakami walks to his hometown after the Great Hanshin earthquake of 1995.

Issue 124

Sonia Faleiro

Issue 124

Teju Cole

‘The city is a sea that can swallow you at any time, a monster that can lash out without warning, a hell of variables and uncertainties.’

Catherine Chung

‘The danger with chasing fantasies is that the reality is often so different than the imagination.’

Lorna Gibb

‘There are two gardens in my memory. The first was hidden behind the rows of shabby council houses where I grew up.’

Ross Raisin

‘I was up at 5.30 this morning, to screaming, and it’s afternoon now and I’m covered in hummus and struggling to muster the energy to remove it from myself.’