Tom Rachman

“It occurs to me that I've been wrong about something: I always assumed that age and experience weather you, make you more resilient. But that's not true. It's the opposite.”

“Anything that's worth anything is complicated.”

“The only death we experience is that of other people”

“I’m too romantic for my own good. And okay, you get kicked in the butt sometimes. But, frankly, I’d rather have, you know — actual sentiments. Than. You know? You know what I mean?”

“I built and I built— heaven knows I have done that well. Those skyscrapers, full of tenants, floor after floor, and not a single room containing you. You asked why I came here to Rome. I never cared about the news. I came to be in the same room as you, even if I had to build that room, fill it with people, with typewriters, the rest. I only hope you understand that the paper was for you.”

“Our worst fear isn't the end of life but the end of memories.”

“Don't people drown their sorrows in things like scotch? Not strawberry whatever-it's-called.”

“So why do you kiss someone?" she asks. "To give pleasure or to take it?”

“I got myself into a tangle. I tied myself in knots. I built and I built–heaven knows I have done that well. Those skyscrapers, full of tenants, floor after floor, and not a single room containing you.”

“What is wrong with guys? Half are molting; half are nothing but undergrowth.”

“Basically, financial reporting is this sinking hole at the centre of journalism. You start by swimming around it until finally, reluctantly, you can't fight the pull anymore and you get sucked down the drain into the biz pages.”

“What's remarkable about fiction is that it places you in the unusual position of having no trajectory. You stand aside, motives abandoned for the duration. The characters have the trajectories now, while you just observe. And this stirs compassion that, in real life, is so often obscured by our own motives.”

“Here is a fact: nothing in all civilization has been as productive as ludicrous ambition. Whatever its ills, nothing has created more. Cathedrals, sonatas, encyclopedias: love of God was not behind them, nor love of life. But the love of man to be worshiped by man.”

“You know, there's that silly saying 'We're born alone and we die alone' -it's nonsense. We're surrounded at birth and surrounded at death. It is in between that we're alone.”

“...news' is often a polite way of saying 'editor's whim.”

“He cannot deny a certain relief in being able to sift through academic tomes, fulfilling his journalistic duty without having to barge past security guards at the Arab League or grab man-on-the-street from women at the market. This library work is easily his favorite part of reporting so far.”

“...looking back, has this journalism experience been a nightmare for you?''Not entirely.''Did you enjoy any of it?''I liked going to the library,' he says. 'I think I prefer books to people -- primary sources scare me.”

“The greatest influence over content was necessity--they had holes to fill on every page and jammed in any vaguely newsworthy string of words, provided it didn't include expletives, which they were apparently saving for their own use around the office.”

“But my point, you see is that death is misunderstood. The loss of one's life is not the greatest loss. It is no loss at all. To others, perhaps, but not to oneself.”

“I have to wonder if you're not being slightly naive here. I mean, are you saying that you want nothing for people? You have no motives? Everybody has motives. Name the person, the circumstances, I'll name the motive. Even saints have motives -- to feel like saints, probably. ... But still, the point of any relationship is obtaining something from another person.”

“As touchy as cabaret performers and as stubborn as factory machinists....”

“They had holes to fill on every page and jammed in any vaguely newsworthy string of words provided it didn't include expletives, which they were apparently saving for their own use around the office.”

“The Internet is to news," he said, "what car horns are to music.”

“She hasn't known many Southerners. That twang and aw-shucks about him--it's sort of exotic.”

“Journalism is a bunch of dorks pretending to be alpha males.”

“One becomes more of a shit as one gets older.”

“She doesn't remember the twentieth century. Isn't that terrifying?”

“She is a wonderful nerd, and he hopes this won't change.”

“He glances at the sorry trio of copy editors before him: Dave Belling, a simpleton far too cheerful to compose a decent headline; Ed Rance, who wears a white ponytail--what more need one say?; and Ruby Zaga, who is sure that the entire staff is plotting against her, and is correct. What is the value in remonstrating with such a feckless triumvirate?”

“Nothing epitomizes the futility of human striving quite like aspartame.”

“Good reporting and good behavior are mutually exclusive.”

“literally: This word should be deleted. All too often, actions described as “literally” did not happen at all. As in, “He literally jumped out of his skin.” No, he did not. Though if he literally had, I’d suggest raising the element and proposing the piece for page one. Inserting “literally” willy-nilly reinforces the notion that breathless nitwits lurk within this newsroom. Eliminate on sight—the usage, not the nitwits. The nitwits are to be captured”

“You can’t dread what you can’t experience. The only death we experience is that of other people. That’s as bad as it gets. And that’s bad enough, surely.”

“If history has taught us anything, Arthur muses, it is that men with mustaches must never achieve positions of power.”

“What I really fear is time. That's the devil: whipping us on when we'd rather loll, so the present sprints by, impossible to grasp, and all is suddenly past, a past that won't hold still, that slides into these inauthentic tales. My past- it doesn't feel real in the slightest. The person who inhabited it is not me. It's as if the present me is constantly dissolving. There's that line from Heraclitus: 'No man steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.' That's quite right. We enjoy this illusion of continuity, and we call it memory. Which explains, perhaps, why our worst fear isn't the end of life but the end of memories.”