Muynak

If there is no strong wind, people sit on little benches, leaning against the shabby and crumbling walls of their decrepit houses. It is impossible to ascertain how they make a living; it is difficult to communicate with them about anything…If one smiles at the people sitting against the walls, they become even more gloomy, and the women veil their faces. Indeed a smile does look false here, and laughter would sound like the screech of a rusty nail against glass.

- Ryszard Kapsucinski, Imperium.

Ethiopia, 1975

The people below were so tightly squeezed together, their crippled limbs, stumps, and crutches so tightly intertwined, that they formed a single crawling mass, out of which dozens of arms stretched upwards like tentacles, and, where there were no limbs, innumerable gaping mouths extended upwards, waiting for something to be thrown into them. As we walked from one church to another, this gnarled, moaning, expiring creature below crept after us, and from it dropped every now and then an inert, already lifeless member, abandoned by the rest.

There had been no pilgrims here in a long while, to throw down their alms, and these cripples were unable to get out of the stony chasms.

“Did you see, sir?” Tadesse asked me as we made our way back to the village. And he said it as though to suggest he thought this the only thing really worth seeing.

- Ryszard Kapuscinski, The Shadow Of the Sun.

Road Paving

What has always made the state a hell on Earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven.

- Holderlin

Ambition

I hope this book turns out like Mein Kampf for the Hollyoaks generation.

- Mark E. Smith, Renegade

Writers And Their Influences

“I usually had a strong scotch and soda when I had driven the children to school and sat down to write soon after nine…A friendly microclimate unfurled itself from the bottle of Johnny Walker and encouraged my imagination….”

- JG Ballard, Miracles Of Life

Degradation

Everything begins in mystique and ends in politics.

- Charles Peguy

History

History is the lies we agree on.

- Voltaire

Howard Devoto

[Howard Devoto had] met Iggy Pop and handed him a copy of Spiral Scratch with the immortal words, ‘I’ve got all your records. Now you’ve got all mine.’

- Paul Morley, Piece By Piece

Katharine Whitehorn

“I yield to no-one in my admiration for the office as a social centre but it’s no place actually to get any work done.”

- Katharine Whitehorn