One summer at the fag end of the nineties, I had to go out of London to talk to a literary society, of the sort that must have been old-fashioned when the previous century closed. When the day came, I wondered why I'd agreed to it; but yes is easier ...
This was supposed to be yesterday. I was sitting on the Cardiff/London train, supposedly about to write this very column, and realising something quite terrible. My head was entirely empty. A vast echoing void. Bigger on the inside, but with nothing ...
I could have been a better mother. My children assure me it was fine. But when you are running to catch the train to go to a rehearsal, and you know your kid has a hacking cough... We said we can have it all and do it all: I can have four children, w...
London is one of the world's centres of Arab journalism and political activism. The failure of left and right, the establishment and its opposition, to mount principled arguments against clerical reaction has had global ramifications. Ideas minted in...
The explanations for the things we do in life are many and complex. Supposedly mature adults should live by logic, listen to their reason. Think things out before they act. But maybe they never heard what Dr. London told me one, Freud said that for t...
(...) It,s hard not to be able. There, look there!/ I cannot get the movement nor the light;/Sometimes it almost makes a man despair/To try and try and never get it right./Oh, if I could -oh, if I only might,/I wouldn,t mind what hells I,d have to pa...
Philip. I have never been outside of England. I've never even been to London. Do you know what I would give for your experiences? How could you possibly think you would bore me?" He didn't answer, but there was such a look of delight in his eyes that...
[discussing the tie murders] Solicitor in Pub: Let's hope he slips up soon. Doctor in Pub: In one way I rather hope he doesn't. We haven't had a good juicy series of sex murders since Christie. And they're so good for the tourist trade. Foreigners so...
Draco Malfoy: Didn't mummy ever tell you it was rude to eavesdrop, Potter? Petrificus totalus! Oh yeah. She was dead before you could wipe the drool off your chin. [Stomps on Harry's nose] Draco Malfoy: That was for my father. Enjoy your ride back to...
Ernie Bishop: Just a minute! Quiet everybody! Quiet, quiet. Now get this, it's from London. Ma Bailey: Oh! Ernie Bishop: [Reading the telegram in his hand] Mr. Gower cabled you need cash, stop. My office instructed to advance you up to twenty-five th...
Sweeney Todd: There's a hole in the world like a great black pit, / And the vermin of the world inhabit it, / And its morals aren't worth what a pig could spit, / And it goes by the name of London. At the top of the hole sit a privileged few / Making...
[still discussing how David can kill himself in order to lift the curse] Harry Berman: A gun is good. Judith Browns: You just put the gun to your forehead and pull the trigger. Gerald Bringsley: If you put it in your mouth, then you'd be sure not to ...
Taxi Driver: Puts you in mind of the days of the old demon barber of Fleet Street, don't it? Alex: Sorry? Taxi Driver: The murders. David: What murders? Taxi Driver: Haven't you heard? Last night... six of 'em. All in different parts of the city, all...
David: I'm going to the police. Jack was right. Alex: Jack is dead! David: Jack is dead and six people are dead. There's gonna be a full moon tonight. I'm going to the cops. Alex: David, please be rational. Let's go to Dr. Hirsch. David: Yeah, be rat...
[first lines] Truck Driver: That way is Proctor, and over here is the moors. I go this way. Jack: Thanks for the ride, sir. You have lovely sheep. Truck Driver: Boys, keep off the moors, stick to the roads. The best to ya... David: Thanks again. [the...
[first lines] Ray: After I killed them, I dropped the gun in the Thames, washed the residue off me hands in the bathroom of a Burger King, and walked home to await instructions. Shortly thereafter the instructions came through. "Get the fuck out of L...
When Edward Gibbon was writing about the fall of the Roman Empire in the late 18th century, he could argue that transportation hadn't changed since ancient times. An imperial messenger on the Roman roads could get from Rome to London even faster in A...
... I will get a First Class Honors degree and I will become a scientist... And I know I can do this because I went to London on my own, and because I solved the mystery of Who Killed Wellington? and I found my mother and I was brave and I wrote a bo...
In those sticky summer nights in South London our windows stay open and our tiny apartment becomes our secret garden. The magic of the secret garden is that it exists in our imagination. There are no limits, no borderlines. The secret garden leads to...
How about we really steal Brittany's thunder by giving the London paparazzi an exclusive?" "What sort of exclusive?" "Let's show them how much I love Morgan Abbot." "Love?" Was I really hearing this? "You... are in love with me?" "Totally. One hundre...
For I'm afraid of loneliness; shiveringly, terribly afraid. I don't mean the ordinary physical loneliness, for here I am, deliberately travelled away from London to get to it, to its spaciousness and healing. I mean that awful loneliness of spirit th...
