'"As far as I can see," announced Lary, "every law of nature is suspended in this goddamn country."'
‘As far as I can see,’ announced Lary, ‘every law of nature is suspended in this goddamn country.’
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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.
‘The boy lay stretched out on a low wooden platform under an orange tree.’
‘Having spent two months travelling in the primary rain forests of Borneo, I thought that a four-month journey in the country between the Orinoco River in Venezuela and the Amazon in Brazil would pose no particular problem.’
‘James, resplendent in leopard skin and hornbill feathers, looked even more solemn than is his habit.’
‘At dawn the jungle was half-obscured in a heavy morning mist; and through the cloudy layers of rising moisture came the whooping call, the owl-like, clear, ringing hoot of the female Borneo Gibbon.’
'Harm that comes through the hands of those we love must be wrestled with; it does not simply disappear.'
‘Nine years after publication, Erdrich’s text still feels timely, even urgent.’
Larissa Pham’s best book of 2012.
