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“...So in his own way Guy Clinch confronted the central question of his time, a question you saw being asked and answered everywhere you looked, in every headline and haircut: if, at any moment, nothing might matter, then who said that nothing didn't matter already?”
― Martin Amis, London Fields

“The moment I was old enough to play board games I fell in love with Snakes and Ladders. O perfect balance of rewards and penalties O seemingly random choices made by tumbling dice Clambering up ladders slithering down snakes I spent some of the happiest days of my life. When in my time of trial my father challenged me to master the game of shatranji I infuriated him by preferring to invite him instead to chance his fortune among the ladders and nibbling snakes.

All games have morals and the game of Snakes and Ladders captures as no other activity can hope to do the eternal truth that for every ladder you climb a snake is waiting just around the corner and for every snake a ladder will compensate. But it's more than that no mere carrot-and-stick affair because implicit in the game is the unchanging twoness of things the duality of up against down good against evil the solid rationality of ladders balances the occult sinuousities of the serpent in the opposition of staircase and cobra we can see metaphorically all conceivable opposition Alpha against Omega father against mother here is the war of Mary and Musa and the polarities of knees and nose... but I found very early in my life that the game lacked one crucial dimension that of ambiguity - because as events are about to show it is also possible to slither down a ladder and lcimb to truimph on the venom of a snake... Keeping things simple for the moment however I recrod that no sooner had my mother discovered the ladder to victory represented by her racecourse luck than she was reminded that the gutters of the country were still teeming with snakes.”
― RUSHDIE SALMAN

“Seizing an imaginary microphone, Dennis adopts a limp Estuary accent: 'Masturbating's changed a lot since I were a lad, Brian. In my day, we masturbated for the sheer love of it. Day and night we did it, all the kids on our estate, masturbating on the old waste ground, masturbating up against the wall of the house... I remember me mam coming out and shouting, "Stop that masturbating and come in for your tea! You'll never amount to anything if all you think about is masturbating!" Masturbating crazy we were. Your young masturbators today, though, it's all about the money, it's all about agents and endorsements. Sometimes I worry that the masturbating's in danger of being squeezed out altogether.”
― Paul Murray

“If you go home with somebody, and they don't have books, don't fuck 'em!”
― John Waters