Alphonso Marten

“Tulips, I thought, staring at the jumble of letters before me. Had the ancient Greeks known them under a different name, if they’d had tulips at all? The letter psi, in Greek, is shaped like a tulip. All of a sudden, in the dense alphabet forest of the page, little black tulips began to pop up in a quick, random pattern like falling raindrops.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“When he had first met her, Royal had taken for granted her absolute self-confidence, but in fact the reverse was true - far from being sure of herself, Anne needed constantly to re-establish her position on the top rung of the ladder. By comparison, the professional people around her, who had achieved everything as a result of their own talents, were models of self-assurance”
― J.G. Ballard, High-Rise

“You know, I really think that when God puts together families, he sticks his finger into the white pages and selects a group of people at random and then says to them all, 'Hey! You're going to spend the next seventy years together, even though you have nothing in common and don't even like each other. And, should you not feel yourself caring about any of this group of strangers, even for a second, you will just feel dreadful”
― Douglas Coupland, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture

“Planet Ay The Apes hus insinuated hissel intae the company. The thought ay that cunt shaggin wee Maria Anderson is not aesthetically appealing. The thought ay that cunt shaggin anybody isnae aesthetically appealing. If he tries tae talk tae ma Ma, ah’ll gless the fucker’s primate pus.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting