#english

I put it to you that there are no British poets, there are no British novelists. I have heard myself described as one, but I think really I'm an English novelist; there are Scottish poets and Scottish novelists. ↗

— Ian Mcewan

#described #english #heard #i #i think

I thought again how odd it was to be on formal terms with someone you had once permitted to lick your ears. ↗

— Josh Lanyon

#death

He was breathing, which is always a good sign. As gently as I could I picked him up, placed him on the towel, wrapped it around him, and put him in my car. I drove to the emergency clinic, the cat purring on the seat beside me. “What’s his name?” the young man at the front desk asked as my towel and cat were whisked to a back room. “Uh…John Tomkins,” I said. “That’s different,” the receptionist said, writing it down. “He was a pirate,” I said. “I mean Tomkins. I don’t know about the cat. (...) ↗

— Josh Lanyon

#death

And I thought maybe I didn't need to worry about my heart anymore because it had stopped beating a couple of seconds earlier, and I was still sitting there living and breathing-though admittedly I wasn't feeling much of anything. ↗

— Josh Lanyon

#death

It's like there are all these languages available, especially in terms of image. Why confine yourself to only English? There's all these languages and possibilities and concepts to speak or communicate with. ↗

— William Wiley

#available #communicate #concepts #confine #english

I’ve been telling you that you should hire Warren.” “Nat, I’m not going to hire Warren.” “Why not?” I opened my mouth to tell her exactly why not, but as I stared at her too-bright blue eyes and the way her chin was quivering, I chickened out. “Because…because I promised Angus when he left that he could have his job back.” “Adrien, he was involved in a murder.” “But he was very good at alphabetizing. ↗

— Josh Lanyon

#death

See! He likes you,” Natalie said triumphantly. I stared down at the scrawny scrap of fur cautiously sniffing my hand. “He doesn’t like me. He thinks I’m going to feed him.” “Now who’s being a cynic? Anyway, every bookstore should have a cat.” The cat -- assuming it was a cat and not some beige bug-eyed refugee from outer space -- slunk uneasily down the counter, and flinched at the flutter of Mystery Scene pages as a gust of warm air blew in from the street. ↗

— Josh Lanyon

#death

Emma sat up very straight in the saddle. Her eyes were huge, but she said bravely, “I could do it!” “I know you can.” “I wasn’t afraid.” “There’s nothing wrong with being afraid,” I told her. “It’s how you handle it. ↗

— Josh Lanyon

#death

Death and its associates, after the initial shock, produce callousness. ↗

— R.K. Narayan

#death

I have not been nourished by English Literature. . . for the simple reason that I have never found much there in which to rest my heart (or heart and head together). I was brought up in the Classics, and first discovered the sensation of literary pleasure in Homer... I do know Celtic things (many in their original languages Irish and Welsh), and feel for them a certain distaste: largely for their fundamental unreason. They have bright colour, but are like a broken stained glass window reassembled without design. They are in fact ‘mad’. . . but I don’t believe I am... [I] set myself a task, the arrogance of which I fully recognized and trembled at: being precisely to restore to the English an epic tradition and present them with a mythology of their own. ↗

— J.R.R. Tolkien

#epic #greek #homer #myth #design