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"Someone told me that life is a collection of details you choose to pay
attention to. Most of my life has been taken up by my work, but since my
work has always been about observing nature, I consider my life’s work all
about paying attention. This is what I told my students: The world is to be
observed, and observing for its own sake is a life worth living."

Someone told me that life is a collection of details you choose to pay
attention to. Most of my life has been taken up by my work, but since my
work has always been about observing nature, I consider my life’s work all
about paying attention. This is what I told my students: The world is to be
observed, and observing for its own sake is a life worth living.

''I think it’s okay to tell a woman she’s beautiful once a year. Any more than
that and her life will be about being beautiful, entirely. Anything less and
she’ll feel a lack of love and attention. My wife always said I never told her
she was beautiful enough. But like I said, I don’t think it’s good for women.''

That book was bloody brilliant 👏 Booker Judges are killing it with this longlist so far

''Shame like a creeping
trickle down the leg. I felt like a dog that walked in his own shit. I couldn’t
meet his eyes at the best of times.''

''Picturing Kenny, in his prime, all muscly in his vest, the two of us
hungry for the fight. And I remembered looking back over my shoulder as
we ran away, Eddie Glackin lying there alone, not a friend in sight to hold
him as he bled out, and I thought what a lonely world it was for unlovable
fucks like us''

He had the sort of grip that makes up your mind for you, says there’s no use
fighting it now.
I let him fuck me on his bed held onto his arms as he looked down at
my panting face. I could see in his eyes my own distorted reflection and
everything inside me was tighter than I needed it to be. It hurt, I roared out
and dug into. I fought back the pain. It was mine to take, not his to give.

‘Does anyone else know that you’re like this?’
‘Queer?’
He could say it. There it was, that was the danger. He could make his
mouth make that word. Just hearing it made me square my shoulders, an
impulse like when I heard those fellas laugh at me outside Fitzer’s the night
just gone. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him.

"I pushed into him so hard I felt like I would, wanted so badly to, go through
him and come out the other side of him as someone new. And then I was fully in his arms, in a grip I mightn’t have been able to get
out of even if I wanted to, and I looked up past the cliff of his chin towards
those cold, frigid eyes.
But he was smiling. We were both smiling."



This is my heated rivalry. Kicking & screaming omg

"When I kissed him, he seized up like a key in
the wrong lock and I felt the muscles of his neck ripple under my hand, just
for one second before his lips came apart. He loosened against me, and his
hands were warm and heavy on my waist. It was like all the weight of me
went into those hands and I was this freeform thing, no longer Tony or
Wardy but a pulse of energy feeding directly into him"

It has clicked. Now the reading begins

"The things you try not to think about. The look on Eddie Glackin’s face after
I stuck the cunt. Wide-eyed like a child who just broke something expensive.
It leaves a layer of grime on you like a charred bit of toast, and when you
scrape it all away into the sink some of you goes with it."

Tough to get into. Tony Wards gritty voice has no rhythm to hold onto making each sentence feel like 10 or so pages.

Second from the 2026 Booker Prize Longlist

Mind blowing. It did get tedious towards the final stretch but the ending made up for most of it.

You look for relationships like that because … I mean I’m not a shrink. But
you’re trying to work something out.
What am I trying to work out?
You let people walk all over you!
They shouldn’t want to!
But they do! You get someone to treat you quite badly and then you’re
all, Why does this keep happening to me?
I punch him in the shoulder

''We keep walking through the light mist.
If it horrifies you that your friend would reduce himself to a silent,
anonymous blob, he says, you might extend the same grace to yourself,
that’s all.''

''You will not come to a final room where you have to face yourself; this
is already yourself. It is already talking to you and this is the only language
it knows, a language you used to know.''

Misery, he begins, is the norm. We must accept this. With this in mind,
we must understand exactly how sensitive we are. Embarrassingly sensitive,
to the last one of us. And petty and vain and vindictive. We like to accuse
one another of being oversensitive because all of us are. “A trifle consoles
us because a trifle upsets us,”

''Don’t ransom the present to the future. You may not be the undiscovered
genius you think you are, but you certainly deserve better than this. And
you did choose it. And it is too late. So now you don’t have a choice. Try
something else and see how quickly whatever’s in you devours your spirit
and spits out the husk. If you’re going to fail, and we’re all going to fail, do
it with your head held high.''

''I know this isn’t a doctoral thesis. But it’s interesting, isn’t it? That that’s
never come up. Because people are obsessed with narcissism and empathy
at the moment, right? It’s like the topic. Sometimes it’s like relationships
have replaced religion.''

''Shame, says Claudio. The shame that runs under masculinity like a great
and powerful river. Ever it roars, and we dip into it at the least provocation.
That’s quite poetic, I say.
If we can do something about the Great River of Shame, we’re halfway
to sorting things, says Claudio. That moment where you see a man for who
he is—a comment, a gesture reveals it and you realize you’re both just drowning in shame,''

''How important is it to have a big dick? I ask him.
Claudio looks away from his screen and ponders this for a while.
I’m sorry to say that it’s very important, he says. We must not say so, but
it is.
It is important, isn’t it?
Oh more than we’d care to admit, homes. For certain. To have, and to be
quietly known for, having a big, beautiful dick. Men go to war over less.
Commit great white-collar crimes.''

Hope that better things are coming. And that when they come, it would
be a shame if we’d given up.
This is exactly what I’ve been trying to tell you about black bag
What exactly?
Black bag is the better thing coming.
What can black bag do for anyone?
Men are very lost, says Claudio. This is the great reset.
I thought you were selling it as performance art?
Does art not have the power to effect change? says Claudio.

LATEST BOOK CLUB PICK YAY!!!!!!
Wuthering Heights was such a blast, so grateful for my bookclub. I've been scared of taking on this tome but i know with my BC it will be a breeze.

'' I will put any questions or thoughts of Justine’s husband in a
corner of my mind and erect a force field around it made of thoughts of
Justine and how wonderful she is and how urgently I want to talk to her or
put my hand on her waist. Naturally this solar-powered force field only
holds up during daylight hours—it has no battery or means of power
storage—and at night I think about little else.''

'' I will put any questions or thoughts of Justine’s husband in a
corner of my mind and erect a force field around it made of thoughts of
Justine and how wonderful she is and how urgently I want to talk to her or
put my hand on her waist. Naturally this solar-powered force field only
holds up during daylight hours—it has no battery or means of power
storage—and at night I think about little else.''

'' I will put any questions or thoughts of Justine’s husband in a
corner of my mind and erect a force field around it made of thoughts of
Justine and how wonderful she is and how urgently I want to talk to her or
put my hand on her waist. Naturally this solar-powered force field only
holds up during daylight hours—it has no battery or means of power
storage—and at night I think about little else.''

'' I will put any questions or thoughts of Justine’s husband in a
corner of my mind and erect a force field around it made of thoughts of
Justine and how wonderful she is and how urgently I want to talk to her or
put my hand on her waist. Naturally this solar-powered force field only
holds up during daylight hours—it has no battery or means of power
storage—and at night I think about little else.''