Tom Marcham

“One must try to make one's life as pleasant as possible. I'm alive and it's not my fault, which means I must somehow go on living the best I can, without bothering anybody, until I die.'
'But what makes you live? With such thoughts, you'll sit without moving, without undertaking anything...'
'Life won't leave one alone as it is.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“It's striking how many of the world's biggest problems, and many of the small ones too. are eliminated by the simplest of solutions – having women around.”
― Geoff Dyer, Another Great Day at Sea: Life Aboard the USS George H. W. Bush

“But we knew that when one goes into a shop and buys a cake one gets nothing but a cake, which may be very good, but is only a cake; whereas if one goes into the kitchen and makes a cake because some people one respects and probably likes are coming to eat at one’s table, one is striking a low note on a scale that is struck higher up by Beethoven and Mozart.”
― Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon

“To be interested in something is to be involved in what is essentially a stressful relationship with that thing, to suffer anxiety on its behalf.”
― Geoff Dyer, Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence