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John Lanchester

John Lanchester Books

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Capital

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Fragrant Harbor

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Mr. Phillips

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The Wall

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“The idea of luxury, even the word "luxury," was important to Arabella. Luxury meant something that was by definition overpriced, but was so nice, so lovely, in itself that you did not mind, in fact was so lovely that the expensiveness became part of the point, part of the distinction between the people who could not afford a thing and the select few who not only could, but also understood the desirability of paying so much for it. Arabella knew that there were thoughtlessly rich people who could afford everything; she didn't see herself as one of them but instead as one of an elite who both knew what money meant and could afford the things they wanted; and the knowledge of what money meant gave the drama of high prices a special piquancy. She loved expensive things because she knew what their expensiveness meant. She had a complete understanding of the signifiers.”

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Book:Capital
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“The white policeman was a man who gave an impression of heaviness. It wasn't that he was fat, but he sagged as if with a moral or psychic burden; his shoulders sagged, his eyes sagged, his suit sagged and he sat sagged in his chair, as if his disappointments with the world were bearing down on him. He made it clear that Shahid was one of these disappointments.”

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Book:Capital
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“Home: it didn’t just seem as if home was a long way away, it actually felt as if the whole concept of home was strange, a thing you used to believe in, an ideology you’d once been passionate about but had now abandoned. Home: the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. Somebody had said that. But once you had spent time on the Wall, you stop believing in the idea that anybody, ever, has no choice but to take you in. Nobody has to take you in. They can choose to, or not. (p. 54)”

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Book:The Wall
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“But the thing which had made him fall for her, fall properly, was the way she seemed so calm and so quiet and so sad. Surrounded by noisy bankers showing off, and their variously pushy or beady or anxious or competitive wives, she seemed to be from somewhere else; a place where people carried their own burdens; a grander and realer and more honourable place. Roger didn't know that Matya spent a lot of that evening thinking about home, but he could tell that she was thinking about something, and it was that other thing which, for him, did it.”

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Book:Capital
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“Grief is the hardest emotion to describe, because so much of it is numbness; it is also passive, something one undergoes rather than something one undertakes. It becomes difficult to locate oneself. When Maria went missing, a part of me did too. My capacity for love, which had always seemed elusive and equivocal even to me, was bound up in my relationship with her. I discovered that after her death. I had not known it before. It is a familiar story. There is nothing original about pain.”

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Book:Fragrant Harbor
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“The problem is that finance is useless. The solution is to try and do something useful with the only thing it produces: the money it makes for the winners… Meaning has to be found in what they subsequently do with the money they have made. For many of them, the most valuable thing they can do with their riches is establish a reputation outside the world of finance which matches the image they have in their own heads. It is for this reason that so many people in finance, after achieving their fortune, become obsessed with wanting to be the thing they know themselves to be: a philosopher king.”

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Author:John Lanchester
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“In economics, models are spoken of as being made of physics when in truth they are made of Lego. They have that degree of provisionality and tentativeness and, importantly, rebuildability. There's a permanent invitation to take them apart and put them together again in a form that works better.”

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Book:How to Speak Money: What the Money People Say — And What It Really Means
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“A volte il linguaggio della finanza è davvero oscuro e nasconde la verità. Durante implosione del 2008 siamo stati invasi da espressioni come "cdo sintetici con tranche mezzanine di rmbs". Più spesso, però, il linguaggio economico è complicato perché la realta che descrive è complicata. La mancanza di trasparenza non è necessariamente sinonimo di malafede e ha dei corrispettivi anche in altri campi, per esempio nella cucina e nell'enologia. Il termine francese baveuse significa, letteralmente, "bavosa" che, in contesto gastronomico, converrete che non suona benissimo. Baveuse, però, si usa per descrivere la consistenza ideale di una omelette, dove l'esterno è cotto e l'interno è fermo ma ancora leggermente molle. È una parola utile da sapere, perché aiuta a capire di cosa si parla, ma il prezzo da pagare è che se ne può parlare solo con persone che conoscono il termine. Anche il linguaggio dei soldi si esprime in questo modo. È un linguaggio potente ed efficace, ma allo stesso tempo esclusivo e impermeabile. Le spiegazioni difficilmente attecchiscono, perché una lunga serie di spiegazioni può essere compressa all'interno di una locuzione o anche in una sola parola.”

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Author:John Lanchester
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“It has been a masterful fight-back by the big banks. We the paying public can't do anything much except admit defeat and settle back for the next set of bills. In the meantime, perhaps, we should try and think of a name for the new economic system, which certainly isn't capitalism ... The most accurate term would probably be "bankocracy".”

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Author:John Lanchester
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