“Everything was beautiful. The merchandise was moving like crazy. I was sure that when I got back home for the summer I would have enough scratch to turn everybody green with envy”

Pimp: The Story Of My Life

“It was the twenty-fifth of July Nineteenth Hundred and Thirty-Eight, and Lisbon was glittering in the azure purity of an Atlantic breeze, Pereira maintains”

Pereira Maintains

Antonio Tabucchi

“If you have a hundred cats, you’ll live ten times longer than if you have ten. Someday this will be discovered, and people will have a thousand cats and live forever”

On Cats

Charles Bukowski

“No wonder he loved it. It danced among its own debris. When Glasgow gave up, the world could call it a day”

The Papers of Tony Veitch

William McIlvanney

“The point is that there is no meantime. There was just that moment and now there is this moment with nothing in between, just the accordion collapsing and expanding, the tune unchanging”

The Ongoing Moment

Geoff Dyer

“One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die”

On The Origin Of Species

Charles Darwin

“Human beings do terrible things to each other and the tragic thing about it all is the way the remembrance of past hurt can rob us of our future and become the narrative of our lives”

On Forgiveness

Richard Holloway

“A good book, read at the right moment, should leave you uplifted, inspired, energized and eager for more. With so many books to choose from, what’s the point of reading even one more that leaves you cold?”

The Novel Cure

Ella Berthoud & Susan Elderkin

“Some people need a red carpet rolled out in front of them in order to walk forward into friendship. They can’t see the tiny outstretched hands all around them, everywhere, like leaves on trees”

No One Belongs Here More Than You

Miranda July

“We’d been running ragged for months and were in the homestretch. With any luck, Timmy and I were about to become full-patch Hells Angels, and JJ was about to become a real-life HA old lady”

No Angel

Jay Dobyns

“I still don't know if things fit together, or if everything will be all right in the end. But I believe that something means something. I believe in cleansing the soul through fun and games. I also believe in love”

Naïve. Super

Erlend Loe

“Perhaps, in the end, where your anger comes from is less important than what you do with it”

My Song

Harry Belafonte

“We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us.”

My First Summer In The Sierra

John Muir

“I have an imagination. It is my most precious possession”

A Notable Woman

Jean Lucey Pratt

“All around me I felt the ghosts of an immense past, I heard their whispers and I smiled when they walked by my side through the fields and woods. I relished the companionship of the dead”

The Hidden Ways

Alistair Moffat

“The truth is, this is a ghost story. No, this is an adventure story. This is an adventure story about how I quit being a ghost”

Man Alive

Thomas Page McBee

“There are only four basic factors that determine how good your food will taste: salt, which enhances flavor; fat, which amplifies flavor and makes appealing textures possible; acid, which brightens and balances; and heat, which ultimately determines the texture of food”

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat

Samin Nosrat

“I’ve decided to open with ‘Hello’, and then, even if you don’t care for anything that comes after that, at least you’ll say I was well mannered”

Little Me

Matt Lucas

“We are all so much more than the sum of our fragile parts. We are all our journeys, hopes and dreams, clad in mortal wrapping paper.”

Penguin Bloom

Cameron Bloom & Bradley Trevor Greive

“What follows is a dive into the creative mind, a celebration of the human spirit, and a vision of how to reshape worlds”

The Runaway Species

David Eagleman & Anthony Brandt

“To a country boy this tapestry of colour, movement and mystery was an irresistible draw, a treasure trove wholly unimagined, each discovery bursting unforgettably into my consciousness: every newt a nugget of gold, every wren’s nest a gem, every slow worm a bracelet of silver”

The Dun Cow Rib

John Lister-Kaye