‘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…
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‘I had always thought that in Blue Joni had taught me about love, about being in love and losing it.’
Amy Key on Joni Mitchell’s seminal album, released fifty years ago in 1971.
‘My work life – like, maybe, yours – is built around another, non-paying vocation.’
Hilary Plum on listening to the Swet Shop Boys while (not) working.
‘The highs and lows of fame, have been far better and far worse than both mother and daughter could have hoped for.’
Fiction by Alexia Arthurs, inspired by Rihanna.
‘Only M.I.A. could juxtapose the tropes of bad diaspora poetry against the horrors of interrogation techniques and get away with it. For a while, at least. ’
Momtaza Mehri on M.I.A.
First published in Granta 76: Music, an essay by Greil Marcus on Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, which inspired the Grateful Dead, Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan.
‘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.’
‘What satellites and the internet don’t do is give a voice to experience. And that’s where travel writing endures.’
