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Overreachers
Richard Ford
‘Madeleine Granville was standing at the hotel window of the Queen Elizabeth II, trying to decide which tiny car far below on Mansfield Street was her yellow Saab’.
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‘Feelings can be very obscure but numbers never lie.’
Kevin Brazil on metrics, obsession and fitness.
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‘An intense workout is an ecstasy of punishment packaged as self-improvement.’
Mary Wellesley on exercise, ritual and Barry’s Bootcamp.
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‘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.
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‘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.
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‘I deployed my body against an opponent like a blunt and effective instrument.’
John Patrick McHugh on playing Gaelic football.
Richard Ford
Richard Ford was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1944. He is the author of three collections of short stories, Rock Springs, Women Without Men and A Multitude of Sins, and six novels, A Piece of My Heart, The Ultimate Good Luck, Wildlife, The Sportswriter, Independence Day (which won the Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner award in 1996) and The Lay of the Land. He is the editor of The Granta Book of the American Short Story and The Granta Book of the American Long Story.
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