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" Money is like poetry because both involve learning to communicate in a compressed language that packs a lot of meaning and consequence into the minimum semantic space. "
John Lanchester
Poetry
Money
Space
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" The truth is, it is hard to know where ideas come from. "
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" I don't think quantitative easing is deliberately misleading, but I do think it's suspiciously bland and reassuring. It doesn't sound like anything big, experimental, scary and strange - which is what many economists think it is. "
John Lanchester
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" In the world where people with money overlap with restaurants and try to work out how to make more money, one of the things they talk about is the desire to find 'the new pizza.' This means a new mass-market product that can be made quickly and eaten both on the premises and as a takeaway. "
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" During the 20th century, the greatest danger to European stability was Germany's sense of its special destiny. During the 21st century, the greatest danger to European stability is Germany's reluctance to accept its special destiny. "
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" Because the Spanish eat so crazily late - anybody who's been to Spain has had the experience of sitting down at 9:30 P.M. to find themselves the first customer in the restaurant - they tend to favour an early-evening drink and a nibble to keep them going. "
John Lanchester
Experience
Late
Restaurant
" We don't want to think about money in an ideal life; in a well-lived life, money wouldn't be one of our primary concerns, and we prefer to adopt the ostrich position. "
John Lanchester
Our
Position
Think
" A preoccupation with money and, especially, with what money meant was, in our family, an inherited thing. My father's father, Jack, who died before I was born, was very much possessed by the idea that money was freedom. "
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Born
Family
Father
" '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
" 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
" When I first travelled to New York in 1982 on a summer holiday as a student, I remember thinking how exciting it was, how energising it felt, and also how it felt dangerous - it was a place where you could make a wrong turn, either geographically or just in a human interaction, and suddenly find yourself in trouble. "
John Lanchester
Yourself
Thinking
New York
" 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
" Once you learn to 'speak' money - which is what I felt I did through the research that led me to write 'Whoops!' - you start to see it at work all around you. It's like a language, a code written on the surface of things; it's in flow all around us, all the time. "
John Lanchester
Time
Work
Money
" Photography brought a lot to painting because it forced artists to think about what painting could do that photography couldn't. "
John Lanchester
Because
Think
Painting
" 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. "
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Go
Way
Taste
" Celebrity farmer. Now there's a phrase that should be an oxymoron. There are farmers on both sides of my family, and I can attest that the overlap between the way farmers live, work and think, and celebrity culture, is exactly 0%. "
John Lanchester
Culture
Family
Live
" In the U.S., it is a crime to lie to a federal agent, and it's often this that sends people to jail over financial matters. "
John Lanchester
Jail
Crime
Financial
" By the time I was three years old, I'd lived at 10 different addresses in six different countries. "
John Lanchester
Different
Lived
Old
" 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
" I grew up mainly in the Far East, where my father worked for the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, which was then a small, well-run colonial institution and not the global colossus it is today. "
John Lanchester
Hong Kong
Father
Bank
" Most people find they have to worry about money; if you don't ever, then in some fundamental way, you are cut off from most people. "
John Lanchester
You
Find
Money
" 'Community,' that loaded word so beloved of politicians, is simply not a reality in most people's lives. It's normal for us to be cut off from each other. "
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People
Community
Politicians
" Cheap money feels like the most natural thing in the world - if you don't think about why it's so cheap. "
John Lanchester
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Cheap
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" '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. "
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Who
Words
Love
" 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
" Often, in horror films, the single most effective device for building a sense of scariness is the soundtrack: the clanking of chains, the groaning of off-stage ghouls, the unmistakable sound of a cannibal rustic firing up a chainsaw. "
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Building
Sound
Horror
" Why should the idea of Western liberal democracy automatically imply unregulated free-market capitalism? "
John Lanchester
Why
Capitalism
Liberal
" There is a moral underpinning to economics. And the kinds of questions that it asks and the kinds of solutions it proposes do seem to me to belong in a more humanistic framework. "
John Lanchester
Me
Economics
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" Our societies have achieved a general level of prosperity of which most of all the human beings who have ever lived could only dream. Now we need to show that we can stop continually wanting more - more money, more stuff. We must show that it is possible for people to realise that they have enough. "
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Stop
Dream
People
" In sport, the money goes to the talent; it goes directly to the worker - unlike a bank, which sits in the middle of transactions and whose income bears no relation to any of the services it provides. "
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Middle
Money
Talent
" My mum had this amazing ability to deflect things, and from an early age, I knew what I was not supposed to talk about. "
John Lanchester
Ability
Early
Amazing