‘He hated the idea of learning words from a list; it was like taking vitamin supplements in place of eating.’
She was an American girl, but one who apparently kept Bombay time, because it was three-thirty when she arrived for their one o’clock appointment. It was a luxury to be able to blame someone else for his wasted afternoon, and Zubin was prepared to take full advantage of it. Then the girl knocked o…
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
‘How can we presume to know what other people's experiences are like?’
‘Santiago Roncagliolo seems utterly unconcerned with whether we like his two characters, and (as in life) that fact makes them irresistible.’
Americans, speaking of foreign lands, often say, 'It's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.'
‘Everything was okay until Marisol accidentally broke a china cup with a rose on it that her stepmother had brought with her from DR.’
‘When I was seven, I sat down to draw God. God wore a pirate shirt, purple harem pants and a red fez.’
‘I wondered how I could feel so at home in a place that was not mine.’
An excerpt from Jessica Au's novel Cold Enough for Snow.
