If you based your knowledge of the human species exclusively on adverts, you'd think that the normal condition of humanity was to be a good-looking single person between 20 and 35, with excellent muscle-definition and/or an excellent figure, and a large disposable income.
Francis SpuffordWe are supposed to be on the side of goodness in the sense that we need it, not that we are it.
Francis SpuffordI can always tell when you're reading somewhere in the house,' my mother used to say. 'There's a special silence, a reading silence.
Francis SpuffordIf your memory was OK you could descend upon on a bookshop – a big enough one so that the staff wouldn’t hassle a browser – and steal the contents of books by reading them. I drank down 1984 while loitering in the 'O' section of the giant Heffers store in Cambridge. When I was full I carried the slopping vessel of my attention carefully out of the shop.
Francis Spufford