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A crowd was an explosion waiting to happen.
A swivel chair faced a bank of TV monitors. Each blinked regularly, shifting focus on the same repeated scene: a deserted underground platform. It was like a dull science fiction film.
freedom of choice is generally limited to those in charge.
Searchlight.
The previous night he’d lurked outside the journeys past midnight,
quality dailies,
Telegraph, Times, Mail, Independent, Guardian.
You didn’t stop being a journalist just because you were no longer in print.
Pincher Martin’s
choices seemed not to have been choices at all, but simply a matter of taking one step after the other.
Queens of the Database
Timothy Spall
Jack Falstaff.
There’s something to be said for getting teenage disaffection out your system by carrying a card instead of a knife.
Half of the future is buried in the past.
Charles Partner:
London rules.
When lovely woman stoops to folly, all bets are off.
marriage had taught him that once the battle lines were drawn, defeat was only a matter of time.
High Street palindrome—Korean grocery, courier service, letting agents, courier service, Korean grocery—and
Geoffrey Boycott
you-make-the-decisions books as a teenager, when not playing Dungeons and Dragons relentlessly,
Old Bastard,
Doesn’t matter if it’s not real. It’s the idea you have to defend.
work out what you’re doing before you do it.
there are certain beliefs you’re supposed to keep under wraps if you want to dine at High Table.”
When you need to act natural, don’t think about what you’re doing. An old lesson. Think about anything else. Think about the last book you read.
Kim.”
Conrad, Greene. Somerset Maugham.” “Ashenden.”
For my twelfth birthday, he bought me le Carré’s collected works. I can still remember what he said about them.” They’re made up. Bu...
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The anniversaries of failure were marked on the streets, with crowds emerging from offices to observe a silence for the innocent dead.
Action Man.
consensus with a vox pop on Marmite.
nutjob circuses,
after the chaos comes the clampdown,
When a woman was thinking about you, it was always either a good thing or a bad thing.
It was late, it was late, but the dinner party was still going strong.
Every joe needs a flight fund,
A flight fund was what you needed when you lived on the edge, and might slip off any moment. Something to feather your fall. To give you the means to walk away.
There’s always someone watching. Make sure they’re not seeing what they think they are.
There was always something going on. And it wasn’t always possible, from the outside, to understand what it was.
“Jesus wept.
In Central London, there’s almost as much city beneath the streets as above.
Sometimes, names leak into the public domain—Bastion, Rampart, Citadel, Pindar—but they remain off-limits; part of Fortress London, the complex of subterranean passages and tunnels—the “crisis management facilities”—that exist less to defend the capital itself than to protect its systems of government.
sleep was never high on her agenda. Sleep was ceding control. While you slept, anything might happen.
Moscow rules,
Because it was legend.
There were issues that were not suitable for comedy.
You could coast for a while on that mantra. Leave it for now.
collect-and-comfort.
