You won’t know me, won’t see my face. Unless you see my face. And then it will be too late.
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‘You won't know me, won't see my face. Unless you see my face. And then it will be too late.’
You won’t know me, won’t see my face. Unless you see my face. And then it will be too late.
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘Feelings can be very obscure but numbers never lie.’
Kevin Brazil on metrics, obsession and fitness.
‘An intense workout is an ecstasy of punishment packaged as self-improvement.’
Mary Wellesley on exercise, ritual and Barry’s Bootcamp.
‘I was not good at sports because I would not do sports because I did not have the body for sports because I would not do sports.’
Saba Sams on girlhood, embodiment and avoiding sports.
‘Following United rarely brings me any great joy and most often it depresses me. If I could disengage, I would.’
Jonny Thakkar on Manchester United.
‘I deployed my body against an opponent like a blunt and effective instrument.’
John Patrick McHugh on playing Gaelic football.
Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She is also the recipient of the 2005 Prix Femina for The Falls. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University, and she has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.
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‘They were two sisters of youthful middle age with three breasts between them and a history that might be summed up as much left unsaid.’
Fiction by Joyce Carol Oates.
‘The livingness of the rifle and the bullet and the death spasm and his own bright quickening blood: never would he forget.’
‘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.
‘There was very little I could do in life except get dressed, smoke the correct cigarettes.’
An extract from Nothing Special by Nicole Flattery.
‘I used to be ashamed of it, though I’m not sure what exactly felt shameful.’
On training to be an opera singer.
‘The big road looked to me like a river, the cars rushing by as if carried along on its current.’
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