On life imitating art: “The very genetic determinism I posited in World's End as a way of shaking off my inherited demons is being proven in fact as we map out the human genome.”

There were two kinds of truths, good truths and hurtful ones. That was what her father’s attorney was telling her, and she was listening, doing her best, her face a small glazed crescent of light where 

He started the book at two-fifteen on a Saturday afternoon in early December. There were other things he’d rather be doing—watching the Notre Dame game,

“We must go deeper,” Cousteau says. He is haggard, worn to bone, his splendid Gallic nose a wedge driven into his face. He uses his utensils to illustrate — his fork has become a crane, his spoon the

 

Somehow, she found herself backed up against the artichoke display in the fruit and vegetable department at Waldbaum’s, feeling as lost and hopeless as an orphan. She was wearing her dun safari shorts

He was no Joltin’ Joe, no Sultan of Swat, no Iron Man. For one thing, his feet hurt. And God knows no legendary immortal ever suffered so prosaic a complaint.

The years have put a lid on it, the principals passed into oblivion. I think I can now, in good conscience, reveal the facts surrounding one of the most secretive and spectacular love affairs of our time: 

There was a time when courtesy and winning ways went out of style, when it was good to be bad, when you cultivated decadence like a taste. We were all dangerous characters then. We wore torn-up leather jackets, slouched around with toothpicks in our mouths, sniffed glue and ether and what somebody claimed was cocaine.

At an age when most young Scotsmen were lifting skirts, plowing furrows and spreading seed, Mungo Park was displaying his bare buttocks to Ali Ibn Haj’ Fatoudi, emir of Ludamar. The year was 1795. 

Mao flicks on the radio. Music fills the room, half-notes like the feet of birds. It is a martial tune, the prelude from “The Long March.” Then there are quotations from Chairman Mao, read in a voice saturated

I was living with a woman who suddenly began to stink. It was very difficult. The first time I confronted her she merely smiled. “Occupational hazard,” she said. The next time she curled her lip. There were other problems too.