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" France and Britain have large culinary differences, but one thing they do share is a relatively low tolerance for modernist cooking. "
John Lanchester
Tolerance
France
Cooking
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" Inequality in the developed world fell for most of the 20th century; we can make it fall for most of the 21st century, too. But it won't happen without sustained pressure on politicians from electorates. "
John Lanchester
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Most
" 'Austerity' is a real weasel word because it's an attempt to make something value-based and abstract out of something which, in reality, consists simply of spending cuts. "
John Lanchester
Real
Reality
Word
" I'm fortunate in having journalism as a sideline to pay the bills, and I essentially do it in order to take as long as I want with books. "
John Lanchester
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" I have sane friends, solvent friends, foodie friends, and friends who can take time off in the week, but I don't know one single person who ticks all those boxes. "
John Lanchester
Boxes
Week
Time
" I'm a huge fan of Peter Jackson's 'Lord of the Rings' movies - I went to all three of them on the day they opened and have seen all of them several times since. "
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Three
Movies
Seen
" A novel usually begins, in my experience, with a thought or image that won't leave me alone. "
John Lanchester
Thought
Experience
Alone
" I have a horror of going down dead ends, which you can easily do with a novel, spending months on it and then realising that it's all wrong. It's demoralising, because you don't get the time back. "
John Lanchester
Down
Dead
Back
" Hospitality is central to the restaurant business, yet it's a hard idea to define precisely. Mostly, it involves being nice to people and making them feel welcome. You notice it when it's there, and you particularly notice it when it isn't. A single significant lapse in this area can be your dominant impression of an entire meal. "
John Lanchester
Nice
You
Welcome
" I'd like to pretend to be all Olympian and above it, as if this is a phenomenon I'm observing from a great height, nothing to do with my own behavior at all - but the fact is I'm absolutely one of those people in the cafe staring at my phone. "
John Lanchester
Phone
Nothing
People
" Tapas is one of the world's most civilised drinking and eating traditions. "
John Lanchester
Most
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World
" 'Fine dining.' I'd love to know who coined the term and whether they meant it to be as offputting as it is. The words evoke an idea of phoney refinement, of needless flummery, snooty waiters, and an atmosphere designed to intimidate the customer. "
John Lanchester
Who
Words
Love
" I'm an omniviorous reader, but I don't read what could overlap with my own work. It's like tuning a radio frequency - it's much harder to pick up if there's something else there. "
John Lanchester
Radio
Work
Like
" To make three films out of one shortish book, they have to turn it into an epic, just as 'Lord of the Rings' is an epic. But 'The Hobbit' isn't an epic: its tone is intimate and personal, and although it's full of adventures and excitement, they're on a different scale to those of the bigger book. "
John Lanchester
Excitement
Personal
Book
" Security is a complicated idea and one with an immense potential to trap us - that was one lesson I learnt from my father. "
John Lanchester
Potential
Lesson
Father
" My standard Nando's order is a chicken breast burger served 'medium,' which is still fairly spicy. "
John Lanchester
Standard
Order
Chicken
" Rising inequality is not a law of nature - it's not even a law of economics. It is a consequence of political and economic arrangements, and those arrangements can be changed. "
John Lanchester
Law
Economics
Political
" One of the main reasons that the landscape of financial stuff in America is different is that gambling is illegal there. So there's a kind of sport-like aspect to the American coverage of finance. "
John Lanchester
Financial
Finance
America
" My mother was very proud of being Irish and being a Gunnigan in a straightforward way. "
John Lanchester
Straightforward
Way
Proud
" I love short stories, but I've never had the impulse to write one. Same for ghost stories. "
John Lanchester
Love
Ghost
Stories
" Is it OK to admit to being slightly obsessed with the TV programme 'Great British Menu?' "
John Lanchester
Admit
Menu
Obsessed
" At the risk of being old-fartish, I like old-school wines that taste the way the winemaker intended, as opposed to organic and untreated ones with more bottle variation. If I want to take a risk, I'll go bungee-jumping. "
John Lanchester
Go
Way
Taste
" I don't answer the phone or do my email; I don't do anything until I've got the day's writing done. I have a word count for every day: 500 for fiction, 1,000 for non-fiction, and journalism is 1,500. That's a level I can sustain. "
John Lanchester
Done
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Phone
" Cheap money feels like the most natural thing in the world - if you don't think about why it's so cheap. "
John Lanchester
Money
Cheap
You
" People misunderstand what a police state is. It isn't a country where the police strut around in jackboots; it's a country where the police can do anything they like. Similarly, a security state is one in which the security establishment can do anything it likes. "
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Country
Like
People
" I remember, the first few years here, I didn't like London much: too big, too crowded, the physical difficulty of getting around. "
John Lanchester
Difficulty
Remember
London
" Once I've properly finished a book, my ideal state of being would be to never think about it again. But with 'Capital,' I felt I'd spent so much time with the characters that they were very, very real, and I definitely had a sense of loss about leaving them behind in a way I've not quite had before. "
John Lanchester
Loss
Book
Leaving
" The Internet makes writing about restaurants easier and more interesting in quite a few ways, one of the main ones being to do with the mundane business of checking what's on the menu. "
John Lanchester
Internet
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Business
" I rather envy writers who do variations on a theme. I like reading those books, but in practice, I can't do it. "
John Lanchester
Reading
Practice
Envy
" I love London in the rare parts of the year when it's quiet, and no time is more reliably quiet than the week between Christmas and New Year. "
John Lanchester
Week
Christmas
Love
" The deconstructed, postmodern pizza has been with us for ages, and the fact is that pretty much every ingredient in the world has been used as a pizza topping and liked by somebody, somewhere. "
John Lanchester
World
Pretty
Somewhere