Quotes from James Meek

And you thought: they're used to it. But that was how those who suffered less always thought about those who suffered more, that they were used to it, that they no longer felt it as you did. Nobody ever got used to it. All they learned to do was to stop letting it show.

Anna woke with the wonderful feeling bad sleepers have when they know they have slept well. As if they have stolen something and got away with it. At these times the memories of what led up to such deep sleep keep their distance for a few seconds and those few seconds are perhaps the only time the world can ever be said to show mercy.

She loved herself, and her body's resistance to all those poisons was the exact measure of how indestructibly young and beautiful she felt she was.

one is often the last to know one's own roof is on fire.

People find different ways of keeping the ones they loved among the living, he said cautiously. Children. Memories. The names of things.

He'd shot and beaten people because he couldn't talk to them.Violence was the only language nobody could understand. There were no translators.

I would say that fiction is something you write in spite of the research that you've done, not because the research you've done.

I wrote my first novel, McFarlane Boils The Sea, under the influence of Kelman and Proust, which is like drinking a cocktail of Bowmore and Châteauneuf du Pape. ( James Meek in interview with TMO )

What Dougie had actually said was You shouldn't get too up your own arse about being a dad. You get a wee man or a wee lassie to play with for a bit and the next thing you know there's this superfluous person knocking about who doesn't seem to know much about you, but it's all your fault.

And you, nobles, who are so much higher, all you have is dreams and clean fingernails and bitterness that the money you got of your fathers is never enough to cover the promises you got of your mothers.

ViolenÈ›a era singura limb? pe care n-o putea înÈ›elege nimeni. Nu existau traduc?tori. Åži el îmi vorbise mie mai îndelung ÅŸi mai dureros decât oricine.

We're Englishmen. For us the road always goes home again.

dac? viaÈ›a ar fi fost o petrecere, atunci copiii erau petrecerea de dup?, iar singurul obstacol între tine È™i asta ar fi fost firea uman?, paznicul veÈ™nic de la intrarea într-un club.

Era norocoas? c? se afla acolo, pentru c? el era singurul b?rbat de pe p?mânt. CeilalÈ›i erau doar figurine de lut cu încheieturi urâte ÅŸi g?urele ca de ac în loc de ochi ÅŸi cu inimi de carne. El era singurul viu cu adev?rat.

How people admire the courage of the chevalier in the field, charging the enemy, when true courage is the knight who defies his friends.

To marry, to start a family, to accept all the children that come, and to help them in this insecure world, is the best that a man can do.

His eyes had seen it all. He was 24 years old.