Sunday, January 9, 2011

One paper's pick



Those ernest and well-read scribes over at The Guardian have put together their pick of 'five of the best lines from fiction in 2010'. I give you theirs below - what do you think of them? 
The Will Self line is a cracker, I'm still thinking of what my others would be.... What are yours?


'A precocious anarchist, at 13 Sherman told me he was going to strip naked, except for a skullcap and an attaché case, then stump into Grodzinski's, the Jewish bakery in Golders Green. When challenged he would say only this – in a thick mittel-European accent: "Can you tell me the way to Grods?"'
Will Self Walking To Hollywood
'I find now that I can more or less acquit myself from any charge of having desired Martin carnally. (My looks, by then, had in any case declined to the point where only women would go to bed with me.)'
'This is a complete story called: "Idea for a Short Documentary Film": Representatives of different food product manufacturers try to open their own packaging.'
- Lydia Davis Collected Stories
'There's a hazardous sadness to the first sounds of someone else's work in the morning; it's as if stillness experiences pain in being broken.'
Jonathan Franzen Freedom
'There was something exquisite to Treslove in the presentiment of a woman he loved dying in his arms. On occasion he died in hers, but her dying in his was better. It was how he knew he was in love: no presentiment of her expiry, no proposal.'
Howard Jacobson The Finkler Question

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