‘All my religious experiences—if we can call them that—have been drug-related.’
Best just to come out and say it at the outset: all my religious experiences—if we can call them that—have been drug-related. Drug-related, note, not drug-induced. Were it not for LSD, Ecstasy and, most consistently and reliably, good old marijuana, I’m not sure I would have had anything appro…
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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.
‘Even experienced users get scared because it’s so far out.’
Geoff Dyer on ageing and understanding the self.
‘The mushrooms made an unexpected comeback and all the accumulated confusion of the day burst in upon us and left us stranded in an alien city’.
‘My life is full of regrets – I sometimes think I regret everything about my life – but I’ve never regretted the time spent riding the rails of Thatcher’s Britain.’
Geoff Dyer on conducting market research in the eighties.
‘Now that we were out of danger it seemed possible that there had never been any danger.’
‘I’ve always been as surprised by what continues in Zimbabwe as much as by what has been lost; the shards of ‘normal’ life that survive in such a frayed society.’
