‘She could see, or was starting to, that someone out there was seeing him, watching him.’
When George’s father died, he neglected to tell his therapist, which wouldn’t have been such a big deal, except she could cop a mood, and she knew how to punish him with a vicious show of boredom.
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‘I think there should be a National Service of Hospitality. The best way to see the true face of humanity is to serve it a plate of chips.’
Camilla Grudova on bad-mannered customers.
‘Anyone who has ever worked night shifts will understand the vertiginous feeling that comes with staring down the day from the wrong end.’
A.K. Blakemore on working nights.
‘I was constantly reading job ads, trying to find my holy grail – a job I could stand to do, and someone foolish enough to hire me.’
Sandra Newman on learning how to play professional blackjack.
‘I loved being a receptionist. What I loved about it was playing the part of being a receptionist.’
Emily Berry on being a temporary office worker.
‘Every part of you would swell, including your eyeballs, and no matter how much water you drank, you were always dehydrated.’
Junot Díaz on working for a steel mill.
‘One purpose of art is to get us to wake up, recalibrate our emotional life, get ourselves into proper relation to reality.’
‘The tally, indeed, on that particular activity, in that particular location – or, in fact, on any couch ever – was, indeed, zero.’
‘Every time I tried to write more, it turned out to be a fruitless endeavor – I felt like I was trapped in a sealed room with no windows.’
Fiction by Yu Hua, translated by Michael Berry.
‘They couldn’t put their finger on exactly what it was they craved, but they knew it was very different to what they had.’
Fiction by Vincenzo Latronico, translated by Sophie Hughes.
‘The intensity of it seemed in retrospect something inexplicable, like a sudden opening in the sky with an outpouring of visions.’
Mary Gaitskill on her experiences with Pneuma therapy.
‘The twentieth century has tolerated a number of mythologies about the role of the writer, and one of the most commonplace is the writer as inspired genius.’
