Awkward

The narrator has just spent the afternoon with a couple who are in mid-breakdown....

"The prolonged and tumultuous argument that ended by herding us into that room eludes me, although I have a sharp physical memory that, in the course of it, my underwear kept climbing like a damp snake around my legs"

F. Scott Fizgerald, The Great Gatsby

The kind of book you'd let your servants read

The narrator speaks of her sister's book, famed for its salacious content...

People snuck off to Stratford or London or Toronto even, and obtained their copies on the sly, as was the custom then with condoms. Back at home they drew the curtains and read, with disapproval, with relish, with avidity and glee - even the ones who'd never thought of opening a novel before. There's nothing like a shovelful of dirt to encourage literacy.

Margaret Atwood. The Blind Assassin

Mirabile dictu

Ernest Walter Saunders is a former British Business manager, best known as one of the “Guinness Four,” a group of businessmen who attempted fraudulently to manipulate the share price of the Guinness company. He was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment, but released after 10 months as he was believed to be suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, which is incurable. He subsequently made a full recovery.

Wikipedia

I'm glad he didn't lie

"I'm not going to lie, it can be fun throwing money over a naked midget in one of the most famous gangster strip clubs in America," he offers, sagely. "But after a while, throwing money around is not sensible, even if the midget is willing." Dizzee Rascal in an interview in The Guardian

Yes, I've done that

I sat on the metal guardrail, trying to find the padding in my buttocks.

John Haskell, American Purgatorio

Overheard on Radio 4

"It's always good to have a back up plan when it comes to Giant Pandas"

OK, not strictly speaking a Beautifully Put, but I had to share.

Ah, the old country

"The IRA had their deluded sugar daddies drinking Guinness in Bostonian Plastic-Paddy theme pubs, but they weren't unique. Every festering little conflict on the planet had its overseas fanclub, ex-pats or second-generation romantics trying to buy a sense of their own fading ethnicity as the world threateneed to homogenise around them."


Christopher Brookmyre, A big boy did it and ran away