The person doing the worrying experiences it as a form of love; the person being worried about experiences it as a form of control.
John LanchesterIt's always the next pay raise, the next purchase, the next place you move to or go on holiday which will make you happy. The credit crunch could have been a moment to reflect on that. We in the West can do something that no people in history have done: we can show the world that we know when we have enough. As the planet runs out of resources, due mainly to the fact that everyone on it wants to live a lifestyle equivalent to those of us in the West, this lesson would have the potential to save the world.
John LanchesterYou heard people say forty was the new thirty and fifty was the new forty and sixty was the new forty-five, but you never heard anybody say eighty was the new anything. Eighty was just eighty.
John LanchesterBut knowing that you had gone wrong, and knowing how you had gone wrong, were not the same thing as knowing how to put it right.
John LanchesterTags: knowing wrong-and-right
I myself have always disliked being called a "genius." It is fascinating to notice how quick people have been to intuit this aversion and avoid using the term.
John LanchesterIn all memory there is a degree of fallenness; we are all exiles from our own pasts, just as, on looking up from a book, we discover anew our banishment from the bright worlds of imagination and fantasy. A cross-channel ferry, with its overfilled ashtrays and vomiting children, is as good a place as any to reflect on the angel who stands with a flaming sword in front of the gateway to all our yesterdays.
John LanchesterTags: reading books past memory exile
Mere adequacy is never adequate.
John LanchesterTags: adequacy
In Shahid's view, the best way through difficult times, as through life in general, was just to go along with things. It was a rare problem that couldn't be solved by being ignored.
John LanchesterTags: life problems difficult-times difficulties going-along ignoring-things
Roger was not personally ambitious; he mainly wanted life not to make too many demands on him.
John LanchesterAlthough he too was heading to work, Shahid was glad he wasn't dragging himself off to some office job. Shahid's view: anybody who had to wear a suit to work died a little inside, every day.
John LanchesterTags: work employment office jobs careers white-collar
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