“Is it gone for ever? I’m not certain. But I tell you it was a good world to live in. I belong to it. So do you.”
― Coming Up for Air
― Coming Up for Air
“In the case of the Levant, it is mere question-begging rhetoric to insist that similarities are more fundamental or essential than differences. For who is to say, where human groups and their interestsare in question, what is fundamental and what is secondary, what is essential and what is accidental? And even if the answers were clear, they could not by themselves determine a political decision. Political decisions are not scientific conclusions; they are rather the promptings of the practical judgment, in which play their part inclination and duty, circumstance and foresight.”
― The Chatham House Version: And Other Middle Eastern Studies
― The Chatham House Version: And Other Middle Eastern Studies
“There’s always a fascination in watching anybody do a job which he really understands. Watch a woman—a woman who really knows how to cook, I mean—rolling dough. She’s got a peculiar, solemn, indrawn air, a satisfied kind of air, like a priestess celebrating a sacred rite.”
― Coming Up for Air
― Coming Up for Air
“At any rate that year of reading novels was the only real education, in the sense of book–learning, that I've ever had. It did certain things to my mind. It gave me an attitude, a kind of questioning attitude, which I probably wouldn't have had if I'd gone through life in a normal sensible way.”
― Coming Up For Air
― Coming Up For Air
“I wasn’t a highbrow any longer. I was down among the realities of modern life. And what are the realities of modern life? Well, the chief one is an everlasting, frantic struggle to sell things. With most people it takes the form of selling themselves”
― Coming Up for Air
― Coming Up for Air
EB’s 2025 Year in Books
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