Quotes from Tim Martin

He (Mario Vargas Llosa) looks grave, transported. And there, I think, is the personality that wrote the books: one in which a subversive comic sense and appetite for the ridiculous jostle with an intense, statesmanlike seriousness about the business of being alive.

How unsettling is it, she wonders, to fool around with ferrets watching you? Their beady button eyes.

We talked about plans for Christmas Day. My father used to like to go shooting, but my mother more or less forbade him. She said it wasn't nice to go round bowling over rabbits and blasting birds out of the sky on the day when our Saviour was born to bring peace and harmony to the world.