Nonesuch Quotes

“And did she think of Geoff? Helplessly. She thought of him when she saw the crumpled dent in the postbox every morning, with its reminder that the world contained angels as well as office-work; was fierce and fearsome as well as mundane.”
― Francis Spufford, Nonesuch

“Between the sound of Geoff and the memory of fear she threaded her way by thinking, her reliable standby, about money. Its complications. Its possibilities. The unsolved problem of where money could safely go, if war was coming. Money reproducing itself at 4 percent interest forever, if you had enough of it to start off with. The impossibility of ever growing rich in one lifetime at 4 percent interest, if you started off with not very much. The need for risk. The need to find the quicksilver flows of money in quantity, money in abundance, and to divert some of it. Money coming, money going. Money as gold, as paper, as credit. Money breathing in and out of the recesses of the economy like the sound of a man sleeping.”
― Francis Spufford, Nonesuch

“The longer she saw nothing strange down on the road, the harder it became to be sure that she had ever seen anything at all. For what makes no sense is hard to hold on to. Recognition is what allows us to take hold of a perception, and to hold it fast in memory. Without recognition, a sight scrabbles for attachments in your mind and finds nothing there to fit it, and when the immediate terror is over it fades, dreamlike.”
― Francis Spufford, Nonesuch

“Stay in the cave, said animal wisdom. Stay very still. If there is any doubt about whether the thing outside in the dark is hunting, you do not want to meet it.”
― Francis Spufford, Nonesuch

“And enchantment?” inquired Ormond politely. “Oh, you know,” she said, the carmine lips hardly moving. “It’s a modern spell, isn’t it. It makes you look, it keeps you looking. Cinema is for the people. Television is for those who need a private connection to power. A circuit to connect them to what they adore. It’s like Signor Mussolini says: man is made to adore and to obey.”
― Francis Spufford, Nonesuch