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Every man's philosophy is perfect, though it lacks the vocabulary, the system and the intelligence to articulate itself.
William Guppy
25.1K posts
William Guppy
@w_guppy
Ex minor civil servant and ex writer of The Pedestrian:
williamguppy.substack.com
- Each large muscle of a bodybuilder represents a language he didn't learn, a poem he didn't read, a fun fact he never memorised.
- Spain invents the novel in 1605, then immediately abandons it; unable or unwilling to appreciate it, it passes to the English and the French. No great novel is written in the Spanish language until the 20th century, when it is written by a former colony.
- No one who drinks just occasionally really enjoys alcohol: they are just drinking it out of social etiquette; and anyone who truly enjoys alcohol is an alcoholic. It is impossible to understand why alcohol is good without wanting to have it all the time, every day.
- There's a sense of absolute security in Tintin afforded by the background colonialism. There is always a hospital, a mental institution, an English doctor around the corner; a touch of reality should things go wrong.
- To my gourmand son, whom I have taught to value the pleasures of the body, I leave these several biscuits. To my aesthete son, whom I have taught to value beauty, I leave the lovely, ornate biscuit tin.
- A man in his late twenties, after a promising start, rubs up against the limits of his IQ and begins to settle into his job.
- A writer should have a wife who is entirely uninterested in, or even dismissive of, his work.
- Replying to @w_guppyProbably the greatest national embarrassment of any country.
- The man at the library who smells of petrol asks me what I do here every day. “I am trying to write a novel.” “What a coincidence,” he says. “I am writing a novel, too.” He points to the woman who was thrown out last week for screaming. “She is, too. We are all writing novels.”
- Marriage is the freedom to be as disagreeable as you like to all other women.
- Develop exquisite taste, work little; the money will come.
- LSD allows even civil servants to have mystical experiences.
- A man, sick of modern society, quits his job, leaves the city, moves to a house in a remote village, and then watches the news on the television every day.