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John Lanchester
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For a while, I had a rule of no smartphone in bed, but now I've upgraded to no smartphone in the bedroom. The fact that we need rules shows how much these things have invaded our lives.
- John Lanchester
#Bed
#Bedroom
#Need
#Now
#Rules
Dad was a very, very principled man, and he hated any kind of story where the baddies get away with it.
- John Lanchester
#Dad
#He
#Man
#Story
#Where
We can all instinctively understand the idea of life insurance; most of us will feel an instinctive repugnance at the thought of the viatical industry, or 'dead peasants insurance.' As market thinking penetrated the life insurance industry, a moral line was crossed, and the application of market ideas was taken too far.
- John Lanchester
#Dead
#Feel
#Ideas
#Life
#Thinking
A novel usually begins, in my experience, with a thought or image that won't leave me alone.
- John Lanchester
#Alone
#Experience
#Image
#Leave
#Me
I grew up in Hong Kong, and London used to seem very gray: the sky was gray, the buildings were gray, the food was incredibly gray - the food had, like, new kinds of grayness specially invented for it.
- John Lanchester
#Buildings
#Food
#Gray
#New
#Sky
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
#America
#American
#Finance
#Gambling
I think smartphones are one of humanity's most remarkable creations: computers are amazing enough, but a supercomputer you can carry in your pocket and communicate instantly with anyone, anywhere... it's no wonder they're troublingly addictive.
- John Lanchester
#Amazing
#Computers
#Humanity
#Wonder
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.
- John Lanchester
#Born
#Family
#Father
#Freedom
#Money
As an outsider to and observer of the restaurant business, one of the things I most admire about it is the risks people are willing to take.
- John Lanchester
#Business
#People
#Restaurant
#Risks
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
#Farmer
#Live
#Work
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
#Complicated
#Father
#Lesson
#Security
The first ATM in Hong Kong was actually at the foot of the bank. I remember my father using it. And I find it absolutely terrifying that - something about the way the machine just kind of coughed up money with no difficulty.
- John Lanchester
#Father
#Find
#Money
#Remember
#Way
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.
- John Lanchester
#Day
#Fan
#Lord
#Movies
#Seen
#Three
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
#Behind
#Loss
#Real
#Time
#Way
Fact doesn't have to be plausible; it just has to be fact.
- John Lanchester
#Fact
#Just
#Plausible
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.
- John Lanchester
#Desire
#Money
#New
#Work
#World
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
#Every
#Pizza
#Somewhere
#Us
#World
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
#Behavior
#Cafe
#Great
#Nothing
#People
The economics of setting up a new restaurant are scary in good times and terrifying in bad ones.
- John Lanchester
#Economics
#Good Times
#Good
#Restaurant
In a democracy, people tend to get the kind of government they deserve.
- John Lanchester
#Democracy
#Deserve
#Government
#People
There's an awful lot of us who don't quite speak finance, speak money.
- John Lanchester
#Finance
#Money
#Speak
#Us
#Who
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
#Christmas
#Love
#New
#Time
#Week
Now that I'm an adult and have a big say in what we eat on Christmas Day, turkey doesn't even make it on to the starting grid for consideration. It isn't just my least favourite meat; it's my least favourite protein.
- John Lanchester
#Adult
#Big
#Christmas
#Day
#Protein
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
#Business
#Nice
#Restaurant
#Welcome
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