Jon McGregor
Jon McGregor
Jon McGregoris a British novelist and short story writer. In 2002, his first novel was longlisted for the Booker Prize as its youngest contender. His second novel was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2006. In 2012, his third novel was awarded the International Dublin Literary Award. The New York Times has labelled him a "wicked British writer"...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
drift forced taking
It would have been very easy to drift into writing a non-fiction book so by taking it away from Nottingham I forced myself to imagine much more of it.
song cutting night
If you listen, you can hear it. The city, it sings. If you stand quietly, at the foot of a garden, in the middle of the street, on the roof of a house. It's clearest at night, when the sound cuts more sharply across the surface of things, when the song reaches out to a place inside you. It's a wordless song, for the most, but it's a song all the same, and nobody hearing it could doubt what it sings. And the song sings the loudest when you pick out each note.
eye clouds missing
You must always look with both of your eyes and listen with both of your ears. He says this is a very big world and there are many many things you could miss if you are not careful. There are remarkable things all the time, right in front of us, but our eyes have like the clouds over the sun and our lives are paler and poorer if we do not see them for what they are. If nobody speaks of remarkable things, how can they be called remarkable?
names doors people
There are so many people in the world, and I want to know them all but I don’t even know my next-door neighbor’s name.
laughter home eye
there are only these: sparkling eyes, smudged lipstick, fading starlight, the crunching of feet on gravel, laughter, and a slow walk home.
knuckles saws paper
I once saw a picture in the paper of John Hegley with 'poet' written on his knuckles, and I thought that was pretty cool, so I was quite up front about it.
needs situation
Everybodys got their own situation and their own needs.
wall memories thinking
He thinks about her, at this moment, in her house, a few thin walls away, packing her life into boxes and bags and he wonders what memories she is rediscovering, what thoughts are catching in her mouth like the dust blown from unused textbooks. He wonders if she has buried any traces of herself under her floorboards. He wonders what those traces would be if she had. And he wonders again why he thinks about her so much when he knows so little to think about.