“I'm a human being and I've got thoughts and secrets and bloody life inside me that he doesn't know is there, and he'll never know what's there because he's stupid. I suppose you'll laugh at this, me saying the governor's… — Alan Sillitoe Copy Share Image
Walking the streets on winter nights kept him warm, despite the cold nocturnal passions of uprising winds. His footsteps led between trade-marked houses, two up and two down, with digital chimneys like pigs' tits on the rooftops sending up heat and smoke into the cold trough of a windy sky. Stars hid like snipers, taking aim now and again when… — Alan Sillitoe Copy Share
For it was Saturday night, the best and bingiest glad-time of the week, one of the fifty-two holidays in the slow-turning Big Wheel of the year, a violent preamble to a prostrate Sabbath. Piled up passions were exploded on Saturday night, and the effect of a week's monotonous graft in the factory was swilled out of your system in a… — Alan Sillitoe Copy Share
“On his first parade the sergeant-major exclaimed that he couldn't make out the shape of Arthur's head because there was so much hair on it, and Arthur jocularly agreed to get it cut, intending to forget about it until the fifteen days was over, which he did. 'You're a soldier now, not a Teddy-boy,' the sergeant-major said, but Arthur knew… — Alan Sillitoe Copy Share
“And when the governor kept saying how 'we' wanted you to do this; and 'we' wanted you to do that, I kept looking round for the other blokes, wondering how many of them there was. Of course, I knew there were thousands of them, but as far as I knew only one was in the room. And there are thousands… — Alan Sillitoe Copy Share
“Gulls, aeroplaning above the chimney pots, were calling that he must talk to Laura about his plans. He needed no telling, for once in… — Alan Sillitoe Copy Share Image
“I was neither glad nor unhappy to see her, but maybe that's what shock does, because I was surprised, that I will say.” — Alan Sillitoe Copy Share Image
If you went through life refusing all the bait dangled in front of you, that would be no life at all. No changes would… — Alan Sillitoe Copy Share Image
Well, it's a good life and a good world, all said and done, if you don't weaken. — Alan Sillitoe Copy Share Image
Everybody thinks theyll never get married at your age. You think you can go on all your life being single, but you suddenly find… — Alan Sillitoe Copy Share Image
I realized it might be possible to do such a thing, run for money, trot for wages on piece work at a bob a… — Alan Sillitoe Copy Share Image
