Category: quotes

As a writer, looking for evidence of readership and engagement on Twitter makes you into the drunk looking for your lost keys under the street light.

I still remember that – remember being sent to quantify it by publishers and other entities, even — and I wish someone had said the above to me then.

Inside, Jackson Lamb squatted in an armchair like a yeti in a biscuit tin: spilling over its edges, but not seeming to care.

BAD ACTORS, Mick Herron

ÉPIGRAMME

A dish consisting of two cuts of lamb, both cooked dry. These two pieces are a slice of breast and a cutlet (rib chop) or chop, dipped in egg and breadcrumbs and grilled (broiled) or fried. Philéas Gilbert explains the origins of the term épigramme as follows:

‘It was towards the middle of the 18th century. One day a young marquise overheard one of her guests at table remark that when he was dining the previous evening with the Comte de Vaudreuil, he was charmingly received and, furthermore, had had a feast of excellent epigrams. The marquise, though pretty and elegant, was somewhat ignorant of the meaning of words. She later summoned Michelet, her chef. “Michelet,” she said to him, “tomorrow, I shall require a dish of épigrammes!” ‘The chef withdrew, pondering the problem. He looked up old recipes, but found no reference to anything of the kind. None of his colleagues had ever heard of the dish. But no French master chef is ever at a loss. Since he could discover nothing about the dish, he set about inventing one. Next day, inspiration came and he created a most delicate dish. ‘At dinner, the guests fell into ecstasies over the dish put before them and, after complimenting the lady of the house, desired to know its name. The chef was called. With perfect composure he replied, “Épigrammes of lamb à la Michelet”. ‘ Everyone laughed. The marquise was triumphant, though she could not understand the amusement of her guests. From that moment, the culinary repertoire of France was enriched by a name still used to this day.

New Larousse Gastronomique (UK) (US)

(obtained on a flash Kindle sale for 99p!)

Carl Jung had an interesting theory about creative fiction and its relationship with an audience. He called it ‘participation mystique’, and in essence it was this: A writer or an artist writes something intense and creative, and the reader understands it as if he or she were the actual writer.

It’s as though the writer has projected all kinds of unconscious material onto the fiction. Jung goes on to say that fiction becomes fact, and that the most bizarre experiences can take place within the narrative because the reader is experiencing it directly. There is no need to suspend disbelief because the reader is ‘in’ the story.

THE THIRTY-SIX DRAMATIC SITUATIONS, Mike Figgis (UK) (US)

The interesting thing about present-day events is not the events themselves, but this state of intellectual turmoil into which minds are plunged, this extreme tension, for they unendingly plunge us into a state of conscious confusion. That all this disturbs the mind without making it lose its balance is a moving way of expressing the innate pulse of life.

THE THEATRE AND ITS DOUBLE, Antonin Artaud, 1938 (UK) (US)

(Samuel Beckett) was thinking about a second play, too. He had a title in mind and asked Suzanne what she thought of it. What about En attendant Godot? She looked puzzled. Waiting for Godot? And who was this Godot? Of course, Beckett could not tell her. He mumbled something about a wordplay on ‘God’. He would later confide to his friend Con Leventhal the real origin of the title. Beckett often went to the rue Godot de Mauroy, in the 9th arrondissement, popular with prostitutes. One day a girl asked if he needed her services; when he turned down her offer, she replied sarcastically, ‘Oh yeah, and who are you waiting for, then? Godot?’

Left Bank: Art, Passion and the Rebirth of Paris 1940–1950, Agnès Poirier (UK) (US)

I have a dream which I shall probably never realize. Still, I’ve been playing with it for more than thirty years, nearly forty years, it’s come back to me over and over, particularly each time I’ve begun to see my next novel. It is to write a picaresque novel, a long story without head or tail, with stops, as in the course of a stroll, with characters who rise up and disappear without reason, secondary stories which, in turn, introduce others. I don’t think I’m capable of it. In spite of myself, by instinct much more than by dogma or conviction, I tighten. I cut short. I restrict myself, each time, to a precise, limited universe.

WHEN I WAS OLD, Georges Simenon (UK) (US)

For it is in the nature of alchemy not to let the mind take flight until it has passed through all the channels and bedrock of existing matter, to redouble this labour in the future’s white-hot limbo.

The Theatre and Its Double, Antonin Artaud (UK) (US)

Since the manner of his killing seemed incomprehensible, the simplest procedure seemed to be to try and find the murderer first, and then ask him how he’d done it.

The Locked Room (The Martin Beck series, Book 8), Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö (UK) (US)