A Wasted Hour

by Jeffrey Archer

‘What are you majoring in, Kelley?’ he asked. ‘Modern American literature.’ ‘There hasn’t been much of that lately,’ he suggested. ‘But then times are a changin’. When I was at Stanford, there were no women on the campus, even at night.’

‘It’s bad enough being old, without being reminded of the fact by a young woman.’

‘And who are now considered to be the modern giants of American literature, dare I ask?’ ‘Hemingway, Steinbeck, Bellow and Faulkner,’ she replied.

“And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.” ’

“Guy don’t need no sense to be a nice fella,”

“Seems to me sometimes it jus’ works the other way around. Take a real smart guy and he ain’t hardly ever a nice fella.” ’

‘I enjoyed talking to you too,’ said John, ‘and can only hope I live long enough to read your first novel, especially as you were kind enough to say how much you’d enjoyed my work, which, if I remember, you first read when you were only twelve years old.’

This moment gives me some serious goosebumps every time I read the story.