John Lanchester Quotes

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It gave her a sudden sense that it was now her turn to grow old, to find the world changing, sliding away from the old ways of being and behaving, so that you were gradually a stranger to the place you lived in. The woman priest with jogging clothes and a BlackBerry gave Mary a glimpse of what life must have been like for her mother as she grew older.
John Lanchester Quotes: It gave her a sudden
Arabella was good at making life seem easy, except when she suddenly and dramatically wasn't.
John Lanchester Quotes: Arabella was good at making
The City is, in terms of its basic functioning, a far-off country of which we know little.
John Lanchester Quotes: The City is, in terms
He was aware of the irony that he who prized his freedom and willingness to seek the truth had been happiest when he had a defined purpose, a sense of duty and obligation, and a specific destination in mind.
John Lanchester Quotes: He was aware of the
For he that hath, to him shall be given.
John Lanchester Quotes: For he that hath, to
It's always the next pay raise, the next purchase, the next place you move to or go on holiday which will make you happy. The credit crunch could have been a moment to reflect on that. We in the West can do something that no people in history have done: we can show the world that we know when we have enough. As the planet runs out of resources, due mainly to the fact that everyone on it wants to live a lifestyle equivalent to those of us in the West, this lesson would have the potential to save the world.
John Lanchester Quotes: It's always the next pay
Sometimes, the only way of doing something is to do it.
John Lanchester Quotes: Sometimes, the only way of
It's as if people used the invention
John Lanchester Quotes: It's as if people used
Somebody told me ... that he overheard a banker's wife saying her husband was working for free this year-this was 2009. What she meant was, he was just getting his basic salary of £300,000, and no bonus. Their sense of entitlement is, in the proper sense of the word, psychotic.
John Lanchester Quotes: Somebody told me ... that
We fight for autonomy over so many areas of our lives - for decency and democracy and freedom, for suffrage, for the right to have some say over our lives, some control - and then in the central question of what we are to do with our days, with our working lives, we give all that freedom away in return for a pay cheque. And are content to be bored and obedient, resentful and uninvolved and tired. This is such a standard, universally accepted feature of the modern world - that we will dislike and be bored by our work - that we have forgotten to notice that it doesn't make any sense.
John Lanchester Quotes: We fight for autonomy over
The seven Ps: Proper Planning and Preparation Prevent Piss-Poor Performance
John Lanchester Quotes: The seven Ps: Proper Planning
People would rather earn 60 grand in an area where their neighbours earn 40, than earn 80 in an area where their neighbours earn a hundred.
John Lanchester Quotes: People would rather earn 60
I'm not saying that I was starting actively to think about it. I'm just saying that I could see why people did. See that they liked the combination of long dull uneventful days with a strong sense of purpose looming overall; the mix of aimless time, structured days and meaningful work. A bit like human life in general, you could say, the terrible regularity with which nothing happens, the genuine terror when something does. Hurry up and wait. That's the motto which governs most lives. It's the motto which governs the Wall, for sure. The only thing worse than when nothing happens is when something does.
Pg 120
John Lanchester Quotes: I'm not saying that I
Petunia only ever went to the doctor reluctantly, and her motive in doing so was always the same: she did it in order to feel less anxious about things. The doctor was supposed to make the worry go away; she did quite enough worrying without actually having something to worry about. When she came out feeling no less anxious, as this time, something had gone wrong. The basic contract had been broken.
John Lanchester Quotes: Petunia only ever went to
The person doing the worrying experiences it as a form of love; the person being worried about experiences it as a form of control.
John Lanchester Quotes: The person doing the worrying
All the gold in the world would fit in a cube roughly twenty meters on each side.
John Lanchester Quotes: All the gold in the
In all memory there is a degree of fallenness; we are all exiles from our own pasts, just as, on looking up from a book, we discover anew our banishment from the bright worlds of imagination and fantasy. A cross-channel ferry, with its overfilled ashtrays and vomiting children, is as good a place as any to reflect on the angel who stands with a flaming sword in front of the gateway to all our yesterdays.
John Lanchester Quotes: In all memory there is
Customers deposit money in a bank for interest; the bank lends that money to other people at a higher rate of interest. This isn't glamorous or interesting, but then banking is not supposed to resemble base jumping or hip-hop.
John Lanchester Quotes: Customers deposit money in a
Psychology looks at people from the inside. Economics looks at them from the outside.
John Lanchester Quotes: Psychology looks at people from
The credit crunch was based on a climate (the post-Cold War victory party of free-market capitalism), a problem (the sub-prime mortgages), a mistake (the mathematical models of risk) and a failure, that of the regulators.
John Lanchester Quotes: The credit crunch was based
The financial system in its current condition poses an existential threat to Western democracy far exceeding any terrorist threat.
John Lanchester Quotes: The financial system in its
You could not spend your entire span of life in thrall to the code of stuff. There was no code of stuff. Stuff was just stuff. You couldn't live by it or for it.
John Lanchester Quotes: You could not spend your
No, Roger had not seen the funny side. But there had been a moment when, after looking at his watch, he had thought: I can remember when Christmas morning would start at about half past ten with a glass of Buck's Fizz in bed. Now it begins at half past five, with a test of my fine motor skills and ability to read Korean.
John Lanchester Quotes: No, Roger had not seen
As Confucius says, under some circumstances murder can be forgiven; but unreasonableness never is.
John Lanchester Quotes: As Confucius says, under some
London was so rich, and also so green, and somehow so detailed: full of stuff that had been made, and bought, and placed, and groomed, and shaped, and washed clean, and put on display as if the whole city was for sale.
John Lanchester Quotes: London was so rich, and
The words lex monetae are really just a polite Latin way of saying, Suck it, creditors.
John Lanchester Quotes: The words lex monetae are
He looked as if he he subsisted exclusively on carbohydrates and ill feeling.
John Lanchester Quotes: He looked as if he
As so often with the ideologically committed free marketer, there is no sense that he's actually thinking about what he's saying; he's merely adumbrating arguments towards a conclusion he reached in advance.
John Lanchester Quotes: As so often with the
Mere adequacy is never adequate.
John Lanchester Quotes: Mere adequacy is never adequate.
Richness, the ideas of having plenty of money, is not ... an absolute state. Richness is about the amount of money you have compared to the people you see around you. It is about where you are in relation to others, and where they are in relation to you ... and whether you can have the things you want and other people have.
John Lanchester Quotes: Richness, the ideas of having
The white policeman was a man who gave an impression of heaviness. It wasn't that he was fat, but he sagged as if with a moral or psychic burden; his shoulders sagged, his eyes sagged, his suit sagged and he sat sagged in his chair, as if his disappointments with the world were bearing down on him. He made it clear that Shahid was one of these disappointments.
John Lanchester Quotes: The white policeman was a
The standard personality type for a writer is a shy megalomaniac.
John Lanchester Quotes: The standard personality type for
He had a simple maxim for all competitive or adversarial situations: work out what the other party least wants you to do, and then do it. Relieving your feelings was fun, but the best course of action was to make things as difficult as possible for the person trying to make things difficult for you.
John Lanchester Quotes: He had a simple maxim
And now here was Arabella, making him feel worse. Maybe that was what she always did; maybe she always made him feel worse, and he'd never really noticed before. Maybe what seemed like the ordinary rough-and-tumble of marriage, combined with hard work and London, was something simpler: the fact that added to any equation, Arabella made it worse.
John Lanchester Quotes: And now here was Arabella,
I've been writing about measurement a lot this year, because I've found that measuring progress is the only way to drive lasting success.
John Lanchester Quotes: I've been writing about measurement
Forbes cost of living extremely well index (CLEWI) An amazing thing I came across while researching the question of just what it is that very very rich people do with their money. As Forbes says, the CLEWI is to the very rich what the CPI is to "ordinary people." There are forty items on it, and they are hilarious, though perhaps you shouldn't show them to your left-wing aunt if she's suffering from high blood pressure: Russian sable fur coats from Bloomingdale's, shirts from Turnbull and Asser, Gucci loafers, handmade John Lobb shoes, a year at Groton boarding school, a yacht, a horse, a pool, a Learjet, a Roller, a case of Dom Perignon, forty-five minutes at a psychiatrist's on the Upper East Side (!), an hour's estate planning with a lawyer, and, amusingly/annoyingly, a year at Harvard.36 In 2012, the CLEWI went up 2.6 percent but the CPI went up only 1.4 percent.
John Lanchester Quotes: Forbes cost of living extremely
It was a mystery to Roger how someone he knew so well could be such an impervious, impenetrable stranger.
John Lanchester Quotes: It was a mystery to
The subject under discussion, economics, purports to be a science. It
John Lanchester Quotes: The subject under discussion, economics,
The organization is "committed to improving the state of the world." In practice it is mainly a rich people's club, committed to preserving the existing world order.
John Lanchester Quotes: The organization is
London created the Underground, and the Underground created London.
John Lanchester Quotes: London created the Underground, and
It seemed too as if many of the people were on display, behaving as if they expected to be looked at, as if they were on show: so many of them seemed to be wearing costumes, not just policemen and firemen and waiters and shop assistants, but people in their going-to-work costumes, their I'm-a-mother-pushing-a-pram costumes, babies and children in outfits that were like costumes; workers digging holes in their costume-bright orange vests; joggers in jogging costume; even the drinkers in the streets and parks, even the beggars, seemed to be wearing costumes, uniforms.
John Lanchester Quotes: It seemed too as if
The idea of luxury, even the word "luxury," was important to Arabella. Luxury meant something that was by definition overpriced, but was so nice, so lovely, in itself that you did not mind, in fact was so lovely that the expensiveness became part of the point, part of the distinction between the people who could not afford a thing and the select few who not only could, but also understood the desirability of paying so much for it. Arabella knew that there were thoughtlessly rich people who could afford everything; she didn't see herself as one of them but instead as one of an elite who both knew what money meant and could afford the things they wanted; and the knowledge of what money meant gave the drama of high prices a special piquancy. She loved expensive things because she knew what their expensiveness meant. She had a complete understanding of the signifiers.
John Lanchester Quotes: The idea of luxury, even
In his experience with women, it was difficult to recover once things began to go wrong
once they had unreasonably decided that you were a person with whom they were not under any circumstances ever going to have sex.
John Lanchester Quotes: In his experience with women,
I myself have always disliked being called a "genius." It is fascinating to notice how quick people have been to intuit this aversion and avoid using the term.
John Lanchester Quotes: I myself have always disliked
Humans make their own history, but not under circumstances of their choosing.
John Lanchester Quotes: Humans make their own history,
We wouldn't care so much what people thought of us if we knew how seldom they did.
John Lanchester Quotes: We wouldn't care so much
Others were simply possessed by a feeling that they had made a catastrophic mistake. They had made an irreversible error in coming to England, and their lives would never recover - their lives would never again be their lives, but the story of this huge mistake that they had made.
John Lanchester Quotes: Others were simply possessed by
Economics as a discipline has in effect become the study of capitalism. The two are taken as the same subject.
John Lanchester Quotes: Economics as a discipline has
But the thing which had made him fall for her, fall properly, was the way she seemed so calm and so quiet and so sad. Surrounded by noisy bankers showing off, and their variously pushy or beady or anxious or competitive wives, she seemed to be from somewhere else; a place where people carried their own burdens; a grander and realer and more honourable place. Roger didn't know that Matya spent a lot of that evening thinking about home, but he could tell that she was thinking about something, and it was that other thing which, for him, did it.
John Lanchester Quotes: But the thing which had
In Shahid's view, the best way through difficult times, as through life in general, was just to go along with things. It was a rare problem that couldn't be solved by being ignored.
John Lanchester Quotes: In Shahid's view, the best
Of seatbelts as an opportunity to take up drunk-driving.
John Lanchester Quotes: Of seatbelts as an opportunity
Frankfurt's big problem is that London is a much more attractive and interesting place to live, especially for the demographic who work in finance: as a former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, put it, Young men want to go out on the pull and do a lot of cocaine, and they can't really do that easily in Frankfurt.
John Lanchester Quotes: Frankfurt's big problem is that
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