‘She got skinny and became a clairvoyant. And she wasn't even a stigmatic.’
It began as a chafing, a patch of dry skin, in the palm of his left hand. He ignored it at first, though at odd moments he found himself absent-mindedly rubbing the chapped flesh.
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‘Feelings can be very obscure but numbers never lie.’
Kevin Brazil on metrics, obsession and fitness.
‘An intense workout is an ecstasy of punishment packaged as self-improvement.’
Mary Wellesley on exercise, ritual and Barry’s Bootcamp.
‘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.
‘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.
‘I deployed my body against an opponent like a blunt and effective instrument.’
John Patrick McHugh on playing Gaelic football.
‘The catastrophe had not happened to all of us, we began to understand, but to each of us.’
‘Was there a story? Yes, there was always a story .Did you write this one down? I've written them all down’.
‘To the inexperienced, hurricane stories always sound like exaggerations.’
‘Every time I tried to write more, it turned out to be a fruitless endeavor – I felt like I was trapped in a sealed room with no windows.’
Fiction by Yu Hua, translated by Michael Berry.
‘There was very little I could do in life except get dressed, smoke the correct cigarettes.’
An extract from Nothing Special by Nicole Flattery.
‘A husband was a leech. Sucked, sucked your substance, and no feedback ever, and where were you to refuel?’
