Clive Davis

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The trickling, calm commerce of a provincial town was proceeding, bit being added to bit and item to item, until at the week's end a series of apparent nothings had swollen into the livelihood of near half a score of people. And nobody perceived how interesting it was, this interchange of activities, this ebb and flow of money, this sluggish rise and fall of reputations and fortunes, stretching out of one century into another and towards a third!

Arnold Bennett, Clayhanger.

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Except in the vague and satisfying abstract, except in matters of "prestige", the British cared little about their Empire, and knew still less. A poll in 1947 revealed that three-quarters of the population did not know the difference between a Dominion and a colony, that half could not name a single British possession, and that 3 per cent thought the United States was still a British colony.

Jan Morris, Farewell the Trumpets.

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But with Chekhov you do not seem to be reading stories at all. There is no obvious cleverness in them and you might think that anyone could write them, but for the fact that nobody does.

Somerset Maugham, A Writer's Notebook.

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Tadene had told her they were both slaves. But that was impossible.  Even Tadene was mistaken there. She did not know why the Massas were taking them on this horrible journey across this huge lake of salt. They must have some dreadful purpose. But she and Tadene could not be slaves. She had seen the slaves in her father's house. Slaves were strangers who you sometimes bought to help if there was too much land for the people to till. She and Tadene were not strangers. They were the people.

John Hearne, The Sure Salvation.

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The actual method of annihilation is generally left vague, both in Nietzsche and [D.H.] Lawrence, but Lawrence has a chilling passage in a letter of 1908 in which he explains to Blanche Jennings how he would dispose of society's outcasts:

"If I had my way, I would build a lethal chamber as big as the Crystal Palace, with a military band playing softly, and a Cinematograph working brightly; then I'd go out in the back streets and main streets and bring them in, all the sick, the halt and the maimed; I would lead them gently, and they would smile me a weary thanks; and the band would softly bubble out the 'Hallelujah Chorus' ".

John Carey, The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice Among the Literary Intelligentsia, 1880-1939.

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I think that he only ever took me out two or three times on my own, and that would be fishing on a Sunday morning, which I loathed. I remember making at school a small pouch for him to keep his tobacco in for Christmas. He dismantled it virtually before my eyes in order to use the piece of chamois leather as a duster. All through the war and after he had boxes of black-market chocolates which he kept in a cupboard. He would cheerfully eat one in front of us, or give one to one child and none to the others. Only once did my mother ever get him to go to a parents' evening at Edmonton County Grammar School. I recall coming home clutching a very good report and advancing to show it to him. He pushed it away unread.

The Roy Strong Diaries, 21 November 1984.

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The telephone rang at about 8 a.m. this morning. It was Derek, my eldest brother. Father had died in the night. He had not got up and Mother, seeing the light still on in his room went in, at first thought him asleep and then realised that he was dead. I remember saying to Julia years ago, "Don't think I will shed a tear when this happens and I shan't feel any guilt about it." I was right. When I think recently how I wept after having suddenly seen that remarkable man, Anthony Wagner, blind, it marks the degree as to how far I remained totally unmoved by the news.

How could it be otherwise? He was never interested in any of us. He had barely adressed a word to me for the last twenty-five years. Home in retrospect was largely hell, and all one regrets is that one didn't get away from it soon enough.

The Roy Strong Diaries, 21 November 1984.

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I often talked politics with people I met, and their answers sounded uninhibited enough. The Cultural Revolution, that hideous upheaval of the 1960s? A terrible mistake, a tragedy. The future of China? Nobody knew for sure what kind of country this was going to be. Communism versus Capitalism? There was good and bad in both. Would they like to go to America? Of course, but they would probably come home again. What a kind face Chou En Lai had! Yes, he had a lovely face, he was a good kind man, the father of his people. Did they like the face of Mao Tse-tung?

Ah, but there was a hush when I asked this question. They thought for a moment. Then - "We don't know," was the mumbled answer, and suddenly I realized that they had not been frank with me at all.

Jan Morris, Chinese Cities, 1983.

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The other day the mother of a German airman received word from the Luftwaffe that her son was missing and must be presumed dead. A couple of days later the BBC in London, which broadcasts weekly a list of German prisoners, announced that her son had been captured. Next day she received eight letters from friends and acquaintances telling her they had heard her son was safe as a prisoner in England. Then the story takes a nasty turn. The mother denounced all eight to the police for listening to an English broadcast, and they were arrested.

(When I tried to recount this story on the radio, the Nazi censor cut it out on the ground that American listeners would not understand the heroism of the woman in denouncing her eight friends.)

William Shirer, Berlin Diary, 4th February 1940.

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On one ramblers' walk, for instance, I was talking to a pensioner who was complaining how the streets didn't feel safe any more. I tried to argue that people's fear was out of all proportion, and that in fact your chances of being attacked as a pensioner are very slim: young men are more likely to be set upon than any other sector of the population. But even as I was saying this, walking along an old disused railway line, three boys aged about ten appeared and started shouting questions at us, telling us to watch out because trains were coming. They weren't being nasty, just rude, disrespectful pests. I told them we weren't on a sponsored walk, we were walking for fun, and were having a conversation. After more petty annoyances, my septugenarian companion gave them a short "in my day" speech in which he told them you should say "excuse me" if you want to interrupt people. They just looked at his muddy sandals and said, "Your feet are a mess." Then they moved off, swearing and calling him "an old codger".

Prompted by a remark earlier in our conversation about how no one challenges this kind of bad behaviour any more, I guiltily made an effort to make them realize they were out of order. I had noticed that they were all wearing tracksuits with the name of their club on it (Ravenfield YBC, as I recall). So I asked what was on their backs, as a warning that we might report them to their club. One of the boys replied incoherently, "Read it yourself, you deaf c**t." He then weakly lobbed a stone in my general direction. It's then I realized it's no good saying, "Don't worry, grandad, they're not going to attack you."

Julian Baggini, Welcome to Everytown - A Journey into the English Mind