Geoff Dyer

They made two thousand years ago seem like yesterday, and yesterday look like today, just as today would, in time, look like tomorrow. (p. 128).

All we can do is keep applying the creosote, propping ourselves up with health and success, trying to keep the rain and the damp and the rot at bay for a little longer, trying to postpone the moment of complete collapse of abandonment for the same reason that one waits as long as possible for the alcoholic drink of the day: because the longer you leave it, the better it will feel. (p. 227).

Ruins—antique ruins at least—are what is left when history has moved on. They are no longer at the mercy of history, only of time. (p. 207).

The idea is to generate paperwork. The word could hardly be more apt. Paper is work. Paper is the big employer. Someone fills out a form (in triplicate), someone files one copy, the other copy goes somewhere else to be filed by someone else, the third is retained by the customer for his records. The most insignificant transaction must be scrupulously recorded and logged, filed and stored, even, on occasion, retrieved. On a trip to Libya, p. 183.

I had to be on my own, just so that I would not feel as alone. (p. 201).

Once you turn forty...the whole world is water off a duck’s back. Once you turn forty you realize that life is there to be wasted. (p. 165).

I should have been happy—I was being paid to be here—but happiness does not respond to that kind of imperative; it is no good telling yourself you should be happy. (p. 225).

The more you covet something, the more certain it is that you’ll lose it, and the more devastating the loss will be when it happens—which it will. (p. 216).

The best way to learn was by looking, to become articulate in the language of sight. The eye could learn to look after itself. (p. 180).

Virility of one kind or another is so important if you are to feel like a man. You have to be able to perform stunts. You have to be able to show off in front of your woman, do things she urges you not to do because they look dangerous. (p. 64).

When you are lonely, writing can keep you company. It is a form of self-compensation, a way of making up for things—as opposed to making things up—that did not quite happen. (p.11).

I felt I could no longer take the roller-coaster of emotions of travel, its surges of exaltation, its troughs of despondency, it’s large stretches of boredom and inconvenience (p. 202).