‘The tally, indeed, on that particular activity, in that particular location – or, in fact, on any couch ever – was, indeed, zero.’
The phone call said to come alone, but he couldn’t just leave his parents behind. Perhaps they’d been called too and didn’t remember the procedure, which would only figure. His father was not good with instructions. Worse, his father was fatally indifferent to what people said. Other people sp…
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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.’
‘She could see, or was starting to, that someone out there was seeing him, watching him.’
‘How far can one deviate from the accepted pieties before one is kicked out?’
Brandon Taylor on naturalism and the future of fiction.
‘Diana saw that Lucy’s appeal was in the nostalgia of her looks: Hers was a teen beauty, at home nowhere more than in a miniskirt.’
Fiction by Lillian Fishman.
