"I get into bed and move clear over to the edge and lie there on my stomach. But right away, as soon as he turns off the light and gets into bed, Rudy begins. I turn on my back and relax some, though it is against my will. But here is the thing. When he gets on me, I suddenly feel I am fat. I feel I am terrifically fat, so fat that Rudy is a tiny thing and hardly there at all...
It is August.
My life is going to change. I feel it."
-p 4-5, Raymond Carver, Fat, in wil you please be quiet, please?

"...but once I stuck headphones in my ears, I found I kind of liked it...normal people tend to keep their distance when you're wearing a Walkman. The outside world suddenly becomes as private as you want it to be."

-p182 David Sedaris, The tapeworm is in, Me Talk Pretty One Day

''With an evening coat and a white tie...anybody, even a stockbroker, can gain a reputation for being civilised.¨

- p.12, Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

"If you are making money and being productive and raising your standard of living, you're not sitting around thinking Who did this to us? or Why is our life so bad?"

-Michael Dell quoted p. 587, T. Friedman, The World Is Flat

"When asked about my new look he put down his fork and stared at me for a few moments. "A bow tie announces to the world that you can no longer get an erection." And that is exactly what a bow tie says."

-p.57, David Sedaris, When You Are Engulfed In Flames

"The sky was purple, distant. Once the sky touched me. I can't remember where or when that was. But if it touched me once, it might even touch me again."

-p.120, Aamer Hussein, Insomnia

"What dream of freedom and resistance took him up into the air on war's wings?"

-p.94, Aamer Hussein, The Angelic Disposition in Insomnia

"...and then there was that long-drawn cry to Allah that come from the local songs, mixing ecstasy with awful longing, which never failed to rip out something raw from the hollow of my ribcage."

- p.66, Aamer Hussein, Hibiscus Days in Insomnia

"I have been trying to convince myself that leaving someone isn't the worst thing you can do to them."

-p5, Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

"He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him)..."

p.169 George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

"It is altogether curious, your first contact with poverty...You thought it would be quite simple, it is extraordinarily complicated. You thought it would be terrible; it is merely squalid and boring. It is the peculiar lowness of poverty that you discover first; the shifts that it puts you to, the complicated meanness, the crust-wiping."

p.13. George Orwell, 'Down and Out in London and Paris'

"If only we could eat our sunsets, I say, we would all be full."

-p. 93, JM Coetzee, In the Heart of the Country

"The shouting still hangs in the air, like heat, like smoke. If I want to I can reach up and wave my hand in its thickness."

-p.63 JM Coetzee, In the Heart of the Country

"A journey...is not just a mechanical movement with a machine (rail, ship, plane), nor is it a mechanical movement together with a human comportment. It is an occurrence of a nature all its own, whose character is as little known to us as is the essence of the other species of movement."

-p.22, Martin Heidegger, The Essence of Human Freedom

"You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafes."

- Ernest Hemingway, Fiesta: the sun also rises
p.100

Book: The Golden Notebook - D. Lessing (cont)

"Anna was thinking: the reason why this is so frightening is that if this weren't England, Richard's anger would mean people losing their jobs, or going to prison, or being shot. Here he is just a man in a bad temper, but he's a reflection of something so terrible...and I stand here making feeble sarcasms."

p. 447, Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

"It may sound ungracious, but I get asked so many times a week to read book and supply quotes for them that I’m getting a bit fed up. Not because I don’t like reading, nor because I don’t like being sent books, though mostly of course, I am sent proof copies rather than the finished article. No, what I’m fed up with (and it is my contention that I am SO not alone in this) is seeing my name on the fronts, backs and flaps of books saying things like “a beautifully paced, unforgettable thriller”, “a magnificent feat of imagination”, “a delicately realised and vividly felt journey through memory and desire”, etc etc. Yuckety, yuckety, yuck. Pukety, pukety puke."

Stephen Fry, Don't quote me

A problem I would consider taking off his hands

Stephen Fry - Moab is my washpot

When I think Stephen Fry, I think funny, fat English-man. Blurred around the edges were the words ‘gay’ and ‘bi-polar’, but these were strictly rumours I considered unsubstantiated, at least in my mind. Apologies now to Fry who is most certainly gay, no rumours going on there. And if his autobiography Moab is my Washpot is true (and let’s face it, people often can’t be trusted to tell their own stories) then there’s indeed a bit of gumption in the bipolar stuff too.

What does your book say about you that your e-reader won't?

"...the Kindle lets readers down with respect to one subtle but powerful element of the traditional book’s appeal: its role as an identity marker. Pulling out a particular book on an airline flight or in a doctor’s office can mean staking a claim to being a particular kind of person. Likewise, the books lining your living room or office can tell others about your interests and background."

Kevin Maney @ The Atlantic

Book: The Golden Notebook - D. Lessing

"Having learned about sex since, I know that the word incompatible means something very real. It doesn't mean, not being in love, or not being in sympathy, or not being patient, or being ignorant. Two people can be sexually incompatible who are perfectly happy in bed with other people, as if the very chemical structures of their body were hostile".

p. 83, Doris Lessing
The Golden Notebook

And vice versa.