The Outskirts

"That was Kathy's take too, also that it didn't really matter where you situated yourself since the centrifuge of history would eventually pluck you up and switch you round. It was the thing right now to take people from the outskirts, the wallflowers if you like, and try to look at events through their eyes. No one cared about Napoleon or Darwin, it was more interesting to be obscure, almost unheard of, a failure, a total creep."

~~ from Crudo by Olivia Laing