21 Quotes by John Mole

I prefer not to elaborate on the various stages of our dealings over the next few days - disbelief, anger, recrimination, the raking up of old sores, bitter silence and so on - but I can say that they gave lasting strength to our relationship, like a thick scar is stronger than the skin around it.

I drank through the buzz of befuddlement into perfect clarity and out again into the blissful confusion of true intoxication.

The American Club was for those who preferred to have dinner at six and brunch on a Sunday and avoid the stress of dealing with Greeks and their language.

It was tempting to take refuge in feelings of British superiority, although I disliked myself for it and hoped it didn't show.

Greek is a wonderfully rich and expressive language, which makes it one of the harder of the European tongues to learn. The active vocabulary is much bigger than other European languages. The constructions and the different endings are not easy to master, especially if you are an English speaker.

Greek has a formula for every event - weddings, christenings, buying a new dress, having a haircut, talking about children, going away, coming back, leaving a house, leaving a home. Kalo risiko is for a new house. Kalo means good. Risiko means fate, but sounds ominously like danger.

For the first few months I went round in a linguistic fog. Often I only realized what someone had said minutes or even days or weeks afterwards.

In principle I thought highly of the outspokenness of Greeks compared with English hypocrisy. When I was on the receiving end I found it bloody rude.

For many of our Greek friends a book is a final desperate attempt to fill the existential void when there is no one to talk to, nothing to do, no television to view, nothing in the street to watch and even the middle distance holds nothing to stare at. To be seen carrying a book in public, let alone reading one, is a mark of eccentricity or foreignness.