“At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure-grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only,”
“You fucked my wife,’ said David, the words coming from his mouth before he realised how pathetic they sounded.‘I’ve fucked a lot of men’s wives, David.’ Pause. ‘But none was in more need than yours.””
“You must live in peace,” he told us. “We are only in this world for a short period of vivid and wonderful waking in an eternity of dreamless dark.””
“The way things are?Two years ago women couldn’t vote. Ma Etta was a slave when she was a girl.Don’t you EVER talk to me about the way things are, unless you’re willing to talk to me about how things can be.””
“Sometimes I write just to find out what happens next.””
“I was born in a hovel on the banks of the Tyne, as so many of us were back then.””
David WalkerDavid Walker was an influential African American abolitionist and writer, best known for his powerful pamphlet, 'Walker's Appeal,' published in 1829. Born in North Carolina to enslaved parents, Walker...
“There’s nowt to know. A miserable caulker. But you, you’re different, and you’ll be grown and gone afore I know.” He stared from the window. Sleet splashed down onto the pebbledash outside. “And this is hardly a place that’ll draw you back,” he said.””
“Every day, every moment, is another step on the journey.””
“I stood up. Can a man stand alone, naked, and at his ease, wrist flexed at his side like Michelangelo's David, without assistance, without diversion, without drink, without friends, without a woman, in silence? Yes. It was possible to stand. Nothing happened. I listened. There was no sound: no boats on the river, no trucks on the road, not even cicadas. What if I didn't listen to the news? I didn't. Nothing happened. I realized I had been afraid of silence.””
“An early and important source of inspiration for Dietland was Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk’s novel and the film adaptation directed by David Fincher. I would like to think that Dietland would exist even if Fight Club hadn’t provided that initial spark of an idea, but I’ll never know.””
“A doorman peers up at the rain from under an awning. We reach Madison, where Holly waits in the drizzle while I stand in the doorway of a boutique, watching that dog walker, those Hasidic Jews, the Arab-looking businessman over there. A couple of cabs slow down, hoping to lure a fare, but Holly is gazing into the small green rectangle of Central Park at the far end of the block. Her mind must be in turmoil. To write a memoir in which psychic events irrupt occasionally is one thing, but for psychic events to dreamseed you, serve you Irish tea, and spin you a whole cosmology, that’s another. Maybe Ōshima’s right; maybe I should suasion her back to 119A.””
“The choices we make today are the seeds of our tomorrows.””
“To come down to my own experience, my companion and I, for I sometimes have a companion, take pleasure in fancying ourselves knights of a new, or rather an old, order”
“Aggressive, foolishly courageous young men, weighed down with enough piss and vinegar to take on an entire NVA regiment; battle-hard- ened,jungle-wise, full of machismo and bravado, yet still barely removed from teenaged innocence.””