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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.”’
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.’
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.’
With Your Tongue Down My Throat
Hanif Kureishi
‘“Your father had a wife in India,” Ma says, wincing every time she says father.’
Remission
Adam Mars-Jones
‘There's an awkward interval, when you're ill but not yet conditioned by illness.’
Spoils
Nadine Gordimer
‘Everyone will be quite safe if they stay in the car and please roll up the windows, says the host.’
How Great Thou Art
Graham Coster
‘At the very end we came upon him – others had seen him from time to time, and reported that he was still out there – and he was bigger even than we had expected.’
A Battle
Patrick Süskind
‘Early one August evening, when most people had already left the park, two men sat confronting one another across a chessboard.’
Menudo
Raymond Carver
‘Vicky says I’m crazy. She said worse things too last night. But who could blame her?’
