British - Journalist | February 25, 1962 -
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
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The Chinese are much too sensible to like turkey - come to think of it, I don't think I've ever encountered turkey anywhere in East Asia, either in a market or on a menu.
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'Austerity' is a real weasel word because it's an attempt to make something value-based and abstract out of something which, in reality, consists simply of spending cuts.
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I don't think quantitative easing is deliberately misleading, but I do think it's suspiciously bland and reassuring. It doesn't sound like anything big, experimental, scary and strange - which is what many economists think it is.
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Rising inequality is not a law of nature - it's not even a law of economics. It is a consequence of political and economic arrangements, and those arrangements can be changed.
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Inequality in the developed world fell for most of the 20th century; we can make it fall for most of the 21st century, too. But it won't happen without sustained pressure on politicians from electorates.
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It doesn't thrill me to bits that the state has to use the tools of electronic surveillance to keep us safe, but it seems clear to me that it does, and that our right to privacy needs to be qualified, just as our other rights are qualified, in the interest of general security and the common good.
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If we are going to remake society in the image of the fight against terrorism and put that secret fight at the heart of our democratic order - which is the way we're heading - we need to discuss it, and in public.
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Video games are the first new artistic medium since television, but they are more different from television than television was from cinema; they are the newest new thing since the arrival of the movies just over a century ago.
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Photography brought a lot to painting because it forced artists to think about what painting could do that photography couldn't.
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I grew up abroad, and when I first passed through London in the 1970s, it seemed a drab and provincial place.
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When I first travelled to New York in 1982 on a summer holiday as a student, I remember thinking how exciting it was, how energising it felt, and also how it felt dangerous - it was a place where you could make a wrong turn, either geographically or just in a human interaction, and suddenly find yourself in trouble.
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