‘I have always liked the hard and sequinned sheen of London streets at night, their empty dockyard look.’

— V.S. Pritchett, ‘When My Girl Comes Home’

‘With the railways in the van, and ruin in the rear – capital leads the way, its passage is marked with universal destruction.’

— Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital’

‘Like Fanon and others, we use the metropolitan languages and turn them upside down, until it screams your screams.’

— Dambudzo Marechera

‘[A]ll might prophecy, that is (in the lowest sense) be able to speak to edification, exhortation and comfort’

— Mary Cary

‘it’s hard not to think everything’s right with the world when you see sunlight glinting through leaves, but it might not be true, of course, the fact that things could go wrong and the sun might still glint’

— Lucy Ellman, Ducks, Newburyport

That revulsion-compulsion at the sight of a cigarette half-smoked then dropped to bob in a toilet bowl. You know how it would feel, wet between your lips.

‘Any messiah who comes is false. The essence of the messiah is that he will always be coming.’

— Yeshayahu Leibowitz.

‘If you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble.’

— Claire Messud.