Martin Amis

Would it be so unwelcome, really, if I quietly joined her on the sofa and, after some murmured compliments, took her hand, and (depending on how that went) gently smoothed my lips against the base of her neck? Would it?

would it be so strange, really, to urge her on inside and to lean into her and gather in my dropped hands the white folds of her dress? Would it? Here? Where everything was allowed?

I hadn’t had a decent thought in my head for seven or eight years

we dwelt in a land, she and I, where it amounted to an act of illicit collusion.

(I like numbers. They speak of logic, exactitude, and thrift. I’m a little uncertain, sometimes, about ‘one’ – about whether it denotes quantity, or is being used as a . . . ‘pronoun’? But consistency’s the thing. And I like numbers. Numbers, numerals, integers. Digits!)

In the sitting room Norberte Uhl

What’s the deal? Can money fix it?

business confidence syndrome, booms and panics, US corporations, the sobriety of financial architecture

My memory’s in good shape, I think. It’s just that my life is getting less memorable all the time.

Yesterday afternoon. I was doing then what I’m doing now. It’s one of my favourite activities – you might even call it a hobby. I was lying on the bed and drinking cocktails and watching television, all at the same time . . . Television is cretinizing me