College wasn't like the real world. In the real world people dropped names based on their renown. In college, people dropped names based on their obscurity.

"Du er ein svært flott kar, herr Skrepping, og eg er svært glad i deg, men du er likevel berre ein heller liten fyr i ei ovstor verd!"

Åååh, desse fem timar lange turane til Bergen med snøggbåten! På Austlandet hadde dei tog. Det var ikkje stort betre. Men dei snakka om å få ta i hurtigtog, endatil lyntog. Austlendingane hadde noko å sjå fram til. Her vestpå hadde ein allereie snøggbåtar. Ein hadde ikkje noko meir å gå på.

-- and for one moment she contemplates how pleasant it would feel to hurl the wretched thing into the Thames, watch the phone hit the water like half a brick. But she would have to remove the SIM card first, which would deaden the symbolism somewhat, and such dramatic gestures are for films and TV. Besides, she can't afford to buy another phone.

Living in her University town was like staying on at a party that everyone else had left.

She reached up and lay her hand on my cheek. “You have the sweetest face,” she said, looking at me dreamily “It’s like the perfect kitchen.”
I fought not to smile. This was the delirium. She’d fade in and out of it before the profound exhaustion dragged her down into unconsciousness. If you see someone spouting nonsense to themselves in an alleyway in Tarbean, odds are they’re not actually crazy, just a sweet-eater deranged by too much denner. “A kitchen?”
“Yes,” she said. “Everything matches and the sugar bowl is right where it should be.”

Oh, we know, both of us, that it shouldn't matter that there's more to life than pairing off, that the media is to blame, blah blah blah. But it's hard to see that, sometimes, on a Sunday morning, when you're maybe ten hours from going down to the pub for a drink and the first conversation of the day.

Me, I'll be playing Beatles when I get home. Abbey Road, probably, although I'll programme the CD to skip out "Something". The Beatles were bubblegum cards and Help at the Saturday morning cinema and toy plastic guitars and singing "Yellow Submarine" at the top of my voice in the back row of the coach on school trips. They belong to me, not to me and Laura, or me and Charlie, or me and Alison Ashworth, and though they'll make me feel something, they won't make me feel anything bad.

Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands - literally thousands - of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss. The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don't know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they've been listening to the sad songs longer than they've been living the unhappy lives.

Elles fanst det nett no ei spesiell forklaring på at han var så produktiv: Fyllepennen hans var framifrå god å skrive med. Men så snart han let pennen stanse ein augneblink, vart det ein stygg blekkflekk på papiret. Altså gjaldt det å skrive i eitt strekk. Ikkje rart det vart mange bøker!

Alt i alt hadde eg hatt eit mangeårig intenst samliv med forfattaren av alle desse bøkene da vi møttest, hausten 1931. Da hadde han òg visst om meg ei stund. Han hadde sendt meg eit fint brev da han hadde lese den første diktsamlinga mi. "Eg vart heilt hugteken av dykkar unge sang," skreiv han. Tenk det, hugteken...

I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them, on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it.

"I always thought His plan for mankind was: "Let's just muddle through and see what happens"," said Friday, "and historically speaking, it's a sound one - it's worked on thousands of occasions."

Reading, I had learned, was as creative a process as writing, sometimes more so. When we read of the dying rays of the setting sun or the boom and swish of the incoming tide, we should reserve as much praise for oruselves as for the author. After all, the reader is doing all the work - the writer may have died long ago.

Jeg elsker gamle bøker som faller opp på forrige eiers favorittside. Den dagen Hazlitt kom hit, åpnet den seg ved "Jeg hater å lese nye bøker" og jeg ropte "Kamerat" til hvem det nå var som eide den før meg.

I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look will be enough to decide wether I enter your father's house this evening, or never.

With the exception, perhaps, of Admiral and Mrs Croft, who seemed particularly attached and happy (Anne could allow no other exception even among the married couples), there could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, because they could never become acquainted.

Flertallet har aldri retten på sin side, sier jeg. Det er en av disse samfunnsløgne som er fri, tenkende mann må gjøre opprør imot. Hvem er det som utgjør flertallet av beboerne i et land? Er det de kloke folk, eller er det de dumme? Jeg tenker vi får være enige om at dumme mennesker er til stede i en ganske forskrekkelig overveldende majoritet rundt omkring på den hele vide jord. Men det kan da vel, for fanden, aldri i evighet være rett at de dumme skal herske over de kloke!

Der fortalde han blant anna at grunnen til at nynorsk lyrikk var så god og betre enn lyrikk på bokmål, var at hjarte ikkje rima på smerte.

Sommaren blei ein søvnlaus draum. Ein evigvarande basar med fruktkorger på alle lodd.