Hot Stew Quotes

“Marcus and his girlfriend already have a daughter, Connie, which is not short for Constance but a standalone name. It is Connie on her birth certificate.”
― Fiona Mozley, Hot Stew

“Scarlet goes on to explain what the various tiers mean, and what services she provides to her members, and about how some of her online customers go on to visit her in real life, or IRL, as she calls it.”
― Fiona Mozley, Hot Stew

“She begins to fall away into sleep but is then awake. This is a common pattern. She’s not sure what manner of insomnia it is. It is not that she cannot fall asleep, but that she cannot stay asleep. She flicks on and off like a faulty generator.”
― Fiona Mozley, Hot Stew

“He’s lovely,’ she says to Rebecca with a performative wink at her husband. ‘Can we swap?’ The women laugh. So do most of the men.”
― Fiona Mozley, Hot Stew

“After twenty minutes in this position she rolls on to her back and falls asleep.”
― Fiona Mozley, Hot Stew

“I can’t even,’ she says. This is what she says when she is too angry to construct a proper sentence.”
― Fiona Mozley, Hot Stew

“She read about their descent into decadence, their lavish lifestyles, their fashions, their affairs, their huge gambling debts, their war debts, their parties, their illegitimate children. Then she read about their demise. The trials. The executions. She read about all the chances they were given by the revolutionaries to save themselves, and about how they squandered those chances. She read about their unquenchable belief in their own rights, their total ignorance of or refusal to believe what was happening right in front of their eyes.”
― Fiona Mozley, Hot Stew

“Trade and commerce and common sense and common decency prevailed, and men and women availed themselves of all opportunities. New roads were laid; office blocks shot up. And luxury flats stood on crumbling slums like shining false teeth on rotten gums. At the top of the building, whose ground floor is occupied by the restaurant, there is a secret garden. It was planted by the two women who share the garret, where the ceilings are slanted and dormer windows jut out. Outside the windows is a ledge, where the roof meets the exterior wall. The windows are large enough to climb through and it is possible to stand on the ledge. The woman called Tabitha discovered this. She is an intermittent smoker and the other woman, Precious, won’t allow her to smoke inside. Tabitha found that, along the ledge, there are steps and, if you climb the short flight, you come to a flat terrace, sheltered by the adjacent slanting roofs but exposed enough to trap the midday sun. Precious and Tabitha have filled the space with life. It began with a cheap chilli plant Precious picked up from the supermarket. The chillies did better than expected and Precious bought others, then the generic herbs of a kitchen garden: parsley, rosemary, chives. She bought a rose and ornamental grasses.”
― Fiona Mozley, Hot Stew

“Books were written, ripped up, rewritten. Karl Marx dreamed of utopia while his wife cooked dinner and scrubbed the floor.”
― Fiona Mozley, Hot Stew