A Far Cry from Kensington

If you want to concentrate deeply on some problem, and especially some piece of writing or paper-work, you should acquire a cat. Alone with the cat in the room where you work ... the cat will invariably get up on your desk and settle placidly under the desk lamp ... The cat will settle down and be serene, with a serenity that passes all understanding. And the tranquility of the cat will gradually come to affect you, sitting there at your desk, so that all the excitable qualities that impede your concentration compose themselves and give your mind back the self-command it has lost. You need not watch the cat all the time. Its presence alone is enough. The effect of a cat on your concentration is remarkable, very mysterious.

...try as i do, i can't recall her surname. Indeed, her very abstractedness and insubstantial personality seemed to say 'forget me'; she seemed to live in parenthesis;...

It is not because we are rats that we tend to abandon people who are down, it is because we are embarrassed.

You can lie awake at night and think; the quality of insomnia depends entirely on what you decide to think of. Can you decide to think? - Yes, you can.

I can tell you that if there’s nothing wrong with you except fat it is easy to get thin. You eat and drink the same as always, only half. If you are handed a plate of food, leave half; if you have to help yourself, take half. After a while, if you are a perfectionist, you can consume half of that again … On the question of will-power, if that is a factor, you should think of will-power as something that never exists in the present tense, only in the future and the past. At one moment you have decided to do or refrain from an action and the next moment you have already done or refrained; it is the only way to deal with will-power.

First published in 1988, A Far Cry from Kensington is a conscious exercise in looking back – it is a novel that announces its own preoccupied insomnia. But its insomnia is unexpectedly pleasant, a beloved wakefulness in the ‘sweet waking hours of the night’ – as if the usual dark night of the soul has been replaced by something much, much lighter.

I offer this advice without fee; it is included in the price of this book.

We were impressed by the way The Boys generally got up when we came into the room, unless they were really overwhelmed by work or telephone calls. 'Is that American or is it homosexual?' Abigail wondered. Anyway, I said, I felt we should tell them there was no need.

The nerve of the woman,' said Milly, 'to commit suicide from my house!

Connie's other job was proof-editing which she did very badly. Transferring the author's corrections to a clean sheet of proofs was something Connie was unable to do without missing an average of three corrections a page, or transcribing newly inserted material all wrong... she put angry authors' letters about the mutilation of their books under the cushion of her chair to deal with later

I had a sense he was offering things abominable to me, like decaffeinated coffee or coitus interruptus

Milly's narrative skill was considerable... she brought a scene to life by a chance descriptive detail in the right place and by that graphic and right placing of words which most of the Irish excel at. She had no Irish blarney, she never exaggerated. I could listen to Milly for hours.

did I hear a snatch of conversation about a general topic.