The Black Locomotive

‘The shaft was the negative equivalent of a skyscraper, an absence driven into the ground rather than a presence raised above it. A small lift provided access to the [...]

Anything Goes Inbetween

‘Scorsese always tells them they have to start a certain place, and they have to end a certain place, but anything goes inbetween.’ — Thelma Schoonmaker, ACE

The Shout

‘Crossley, a big man of forty or fifty,had a queer, not unpleasant face. But I felt a little uncomfortable, sitting next to him in the scoring box, his black-whiskered [...]

Sunday in the Trees

‘I still hadn’t taken my eyes off the zelkovas. They were rooted at the points of a triangle, but their branches overlapped, and the closer they got to the [...]

The Mark on the Wall

‘A world without professors or specialists or house-keepers with the profiles of policemen, a world which one could slice with one’s thought as a fish slices the water with [...]

Sun

‘She knew the sun in heaven, blue-molten with his white fire edges, throwing off fire. And though he shone on all the world, when she lay unclothed he focussed [...]

The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie

‘She’d been right, after all. He had been named after a star. ‘Or at least the idea of one. For, as it seemed to be with all things Quark [...]

How we value human lives

‘If anything good can come of these two tragedies, I hope it’s that it makes more people rethink how we value human lives. I hope it makes it uncomfortably [...]

Tiananmen

每年，在我记不清楚的岁月里，我在1989年6月4日都会非常难过，而且感到相当孤独。今年也不例外。我的记忆会逐渐消失，但我的心永远是坚强的，我将永远找时间来回忆，我希望我不会独自回忆。 Every year, for more years than I can clearly remember, I get very sad on 4 June 1989, and I feel quite lonely. This year is no exception. [...]

The Nomenclature of Fear

‘After a time, I no longer heard my words but only the sound of my voice, and saw only the faint trace of a smile, which spread from one [...]

Guest

‘For a split-second his pupils flare, and his nostrils, and he raises his chin as if roused by the scent of something, but then his gaze slips, eyes unfocussed [...]

You Shall Know Them by Their Pitchforks

‘Our memories from before do not add up. Some of us remember a wasteland, others recall green countryside and thriving towns. Ahktar remembers that he served as president of [...]

My standard for verisimilitude

‘My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I started to write prose narrative: fuck the average reader. I was always told to write for [...]

Morning Song

I love the precision of the pauses in ‘Morning Song’, particularly the semicolon (the only one Plath uses in the poem) after ‘notes’. Beautiful. ‘Your mouth opens clean as [...]

The Kromlau Gambit

‘Severed of flesh and earth, the dog’s soul remembered. It remembered wolf and jackal. Becoming rage and anger, it remembered death carried in saucer eyes and cunning carried in [...]

Corwick Grows

‘But then I see how the limits of the city have changed. The furthest estates are shrouded in darkness where street lights should keep them aglow. And the houses [...]

The Color of Distance

‘Ani’s ears lifted, this time in surprise. Deep work was dangerous. She remembered the first time she had attempted it. She had become so attuned to the bird she [...]

Gravity of the Flux

‘Miami Vice is above all a great film on the human condition in a time of flux. Everything progresses at top speed (the meetings, the love affairs, the reversals, [...]

Dystopia for Realists

‘Calls for accountability and transparency might sound technocratic and unambitious. But the right to an explanation of how an automated decision-making tool arrived at a particular outcome mitigates against [...]

Real Tigers

‘Cigarette smouldering in hand he shambled into the lane, a coronet of smoke lingering in the air behind him, like an image of a wandering spirit… ‘Which lasted but [...]

Follow the Ecstasy

‘When I criticize a system, they think I criticize them – and that is of course because they accept the system and identify themselves with it. All love and [...]

James Sallis

‘My model’s more the European – someone like [Raymond] Queneau, who wrote novels, poems, essays and popular songs, was a phenomenal editor… He didn’t have to check one or [...]