‘I truly hate food, I said to Isidor. I just can’t take it any more. F*** food!’
—at the mention of food a fight always gradually breaks out. Something has happened to the way people eat; there are too many TRIBES about it. There is the tribe of those who eat only at home, their tiny kitchens stuffed with cookbooks. If they have space they have built kitchen islands, under spo…
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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.
Americans, speaking of foreign lands, often say, 'It's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.'
‘ My stunningly crummy apartment–there were big holes in the walls and I lay awake nights worrying about how they got there’.
‘None of these high-falutin pansy-ass would-be 'technologies' are going to save literature.’
‘North by Northwest isn't a film about what happens to Cary Grant, it's about what happens to his suit.’
‘I love Ai’s work because it gives me permission and reminds me that poetry invented fiction. I needed that in 1999 and I need it today.’
