‘Have you seen his Twombly?’
‘What?’
‘He has an amazing Twombly. Have you seen it?’
‘I don’t believe I’ve seen it,’ said Alice.
‘You’d know if you had.’
‘I suppose I would, yes. In that case - I haven’t seen it. You
have presumably.’
‘Yes, I saw it this morning,’ said Pimm.
(from A History of Facelifting)

The core of Romanticism: to succeed is to have aspired too low.
(from One Hot Summer In St Petersburg)

I ask James Baldwin ‘Do you think of yourself as a simple or a complex person?’
First the frown – then the glorious, gap-toothed smile bursts like a firework
across his face. ‘Well, either way, I’d be making a terrible mistake, wouldn’t I.’
(from To Noto)

From the Gulf of Mexico the waves emerge quite small today and flop languidly onto the lion-coloured strand, throwing the thin foam ahead of them with a careless lack of purpose. The foam bubbles willy-nilly at the water’s edge like the turmoil of saliva at the lip of a cataleptic.
(from Satyrday)

Sicilians love food, money, death and sex, in that order.
(from To Noto)

Forest sweeps cloak-like all around me and invisible birds call to each other in unearthly bell-like tones and ferns trace the air with the delicacy of Adam interiors. It is not sinister; there is no feeling that snakes might at any moment swing down across one’s face or carnivores growl from an adjacent clump. It is more likely one will come across a tea-party out of Lewis Carroll or Fellini. This country grants that rarest of gifts: to be free without being vulnerable.
(from Going As Far As I Can)

Nancy came out of the house in her afternoon diamonds and an old frayed beachrobe in cornflower blue towelling, carrying a tray of Dairi-Fresh French Onion Chip ’n’ Dip and Stella d’Oro Genuine Italian Style Sesame Breadsticks.
(from Satyrday)

Time hung heavy like an unmilked udder.
(from A History of Facelifting)

His shoes were black leather slip-ons, cut low to reveal cream socks, and his plump insteps pushed up out of them like rising brioche.
(from Satyrday)

‘The air is thick with myth,’ she observes. ‘Can’t you feel it all about us? Thick with myth.’
(from To Noto)

The special old-fashioned suet pudding, full of steak & kidney, sat on its plate in the centre of the table, steaming faintly in the unattractive light of the dining-room. The pudding had the colour and greasy texture of human flesh that has never known sunshine. And when Pam ceremoniously cut into it with a large knife, a rich dark diarrhoea oozed forth.
(from The Underbelly)

I want to be sentimental about the Russians – but they won’t let me.
(from One Hot Summer In St Petersburg)

Two rowdy lesbians – mighty walkers by the glimpse of them – have moved into the room next door. All the other rooms are vacant. So they’ve stuck ’em next door to me. The walls of course offer no more insulation than cardboard. While the girls knock each other about, with gushes of high whinnying laughter, I finish Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.
(from Going As Far As I Can)