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And in his customary corner, the awesome Rocker, Superintendent of Police, ex-Palestine, ex-Kenya, ex-Malaya, ex-Fiji, an implacable warhorse with a beer, one set of slightly reddened knuckles, and a weekend copy of the South China Morning Post.
If nightmares were necessary in order to restore him to the ranks of normal men and women, then he could embrace them with gratitude. But not in the worst of his nightmares had it occurred to him that having written the war, he might not be able to write the peace.
am married but free,’ it said, and neither claim was true.
‘Well, well, you are the root-and-bough man these days, George. I dread to think what would happen if you were ever to wield your axe round my side of the garden. Those outstations are gilt-edged stock. Do away with them now and you’ll never get them back. Later, if you like, when you’re on the road, you can cash them in and buy yourself something better. You mustn’t sell when the market’s low, you know. You must wait till you can take a profit.’
A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world.
the Queen Bee took issue with the term ‘high-class’. She insisted that ‘superior’ was the proper way to describe that kind of tart.
forty is an adolescence where one sleeps to grow up or to stay young.
Stubbs made all the weary jokes about editors come true. He was a resentful man with heavy grey jowls and heavy eyelids that looked as though they had been rubbed with soot. He would stay with the Daily until the ulcers got him, and then they would send him to the Sunday. Another year, he would be farmed out to the women’s magazines to take orders from children till he had served his time. Meanwhile he was devious, and listened to incoming phone calls from correspondents without telling them he was on the line.
being an exiled patriot in search of a quick fortune can age you pretty fast.
Even the Rocker was muted. He was attended this morning by his wife, a former Bible School teacher from Borneo, a dried-out shrew in bobbed hair and ankle socks who could spot a sin before it was committed.
a dried-out shrew in bobbed hair and ankle socks who could spot a sin before it was committed.
The trouble with being exclusive in Hong Kong, their faces said, was that not enough people are thrown out.
of the Scottish houses that plundered the coast six days a week and prayed to Calvin on the seventh.
Who was it who used to say “we’re fighting for the survival of Reasonable Man”? Steed-Asprey? Or was it Control? I loved that. It covered it all. Hitler. The new thing. That’s who we are: reasonable. Aren’t we, Trot? We’re not just English. We’re reasonable.’
your prize sits down the far end of some damned alley, jammed between a silted klong and a pile of concrete trash, and it costs you five dollars US more than you expected.
As they slowly took off, he saw a group of fat Thais playing lousy golf on perfect links just beside the runway.
Nobody learned anything, nothing changed, the offal was cleared away by morning.
When the Pentagon thinks of civilisation, thought Jerry, it thinks of you.
In Ricardo’s simple world, to talk about himself was to get to know the other person better.
This is how they tried to win, Jerry thought: from inside soundproof rooms, through smoked glass, using machines at arm’s length. This is how they lost.
What a man thinks is his own business. What matters is what he does.
the struggle for peace not a single stone will be left standing,
They told me God was a peaceful man, but I read once that there have never been so many civil wars as in the Kingdom of Christ.
