Quite often, ambition operates on a level of irritation. Not even jealousy, just irritation.
Geoff DyerThere's something about New York. You can get a nice feeling of belonging as a writer here. It's probably the best city on Earth like that. I miss the wisecracking of New York.
Geoff DyerLife is bearable even when it's unbearable: that is what's so terrible, that is the unbearable thing about it.
Geoff DyerThe perfect life, the perfect lie, I realised after Christmas, is one which prevents you from doing that which you would ideally have done (painted, say, or written unpublishable poetry) but which, in fact, you have no wish to do. People need to feel that they have been thwarted by circumstances from pursuing the life which, had they led it, they would not have wanted; whereas the life they really want is precisely a compound of all those thwarting circumstances.
Geoff Dyer