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Hunting Mister Heartbreak Quotes
Hunting Mister Heartbreak: A Discovery of America
by
Jonathan Raban452 ratings, 4.06 average rating, 43 reviews
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Hunting Mister Heartbreak Quotes
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“OK, OK,' said the guy with his hands up. 'Go ahead. OK. Kill me.'
There was now a telephone installed in Room 1326. I could have called the police department. Yet, from thirteen storeys up, the scene in the street was just a scene. These people were play-acting. I thought, for a moment, about going to the phone, but it would have been like rising from the stalls in the middle of 'The Mousetrap' in order to fetch a policeman. So I kept on watching.”
― Hunting Mister Heartbreak: A Discovery of America
There was now a telephone installed in Room 1326. I could have called the police department. Yet, from thirteen storeys up, the scene in the street was just a scene. These people were play-acting. I thought, for a moment, about going to the phone, but it would have been like rising from the stalls in the middle of 'The Mousetrap' in order to fetch a policeman. So I kept on watching.”
― Hunting Mister Heartbreak: A Discovery of America
“For Diane, places like Brooklyn and the Bronx were as remote as Beirut and Teheran. Nobody went there. The subway system was an ugly rumour - she had not set foot in it for years. She did quite often go walking alone in the knot of streets around East 30th, as a seriously entrenched Air Person would not have dared to do; and sometimes what she saw on television led her to take the elevator down to the street, where she would prowl through her own neighbourhood to the site of a disaster or the scene of a crime, like a war correspondent braving the battlefield for the sake of a story.
I sometimes joined her on evenings when she was dining out uptown - evenings that had the flavour of a tense commando operation. At eight o'clock, the lobby of her building was full of Air People waiting for their transport. A guard would secure a cab, and we'd fly through New York to the West 60s or East 80s. I thought the cabs far grimmer and more alarming than the subways. Their suspension had usually been long wrecked by the potholes on the Avenues; the bulletproof Plexiglass screen between us and the driver had knife-scratches on it and had turned milky and opaque with age; the blood-coloured seat covers were ripped and holed. The driver was nearly always in a state of uncontained fury, and inclined to treat his cab as a weapon, an Exocet missile in the War of New York. Swaying and shuddering over the terrible roads, whole the driver burbled obscenities at everyone who came within his sight, was an experience calculated to make Air People fervently wish themselves back in their safe eyries.”
― Hunting Mister Heartbreak: A Discovery of America
I sometimes joined her on evenings when she was dining out uptown - evenings that had the flavour of a tense commando operation. At eight o'clock, the lobby of her building was full of Air People waiting for their transport. A guard would secure a cab, and we'd fly through New York to the West 60s or East 80s. I thought the cabs far grimmer and more alarming than the subways. Their suspension had usually been long wrecked by the potholes on the Avenues; the bulletproof Plexiglass screen between us and the driver had knife-scratches on it and had turned milky and opaque with age; the blood-coloured seat covers were ripped and holed. The driver was nearly always in a state of uncontained fury, and inclined to treat his cab as a weapon, an Exocet missile in the War of New York. Swaying and shuddering over the terrible roads, whole the driver burbled obscenities at everyone who came within his sight, was an experience calculated to make Air People fervently wish themselves back in their safe eyries.”
― Hunting Mister Heartbreak: A Discovery of America
