If you take the contempt some Americans have for yuppies and multiply it by 10 you might come close to understanding their attitude towards the City, as they call it - London, the people of the south.
Martin C. Smith

I feel very bad about getting things wrong.
Martin C. Smith

The fact is that I loved being in England.
Martin C. Smith

I have another Russian idea, too, with a place and a period, so I guess I have enough to keep me busy for quite some time, especially considering that I'm such a slow writer.
Martin C. Smith

But at the same time I went down into the mines with working miners who are still young men, younger than I am, who are aware that their working life is coming to an end and they feel suddenly cut off.
Martin C. Smith

Then years back, when I moved to California, I happened to see a book about fashions of 19th-century Victorian England, only four pages of which was devoted to the dress of the working class.
Martin C. Smith

What's wonderful is to read the different translations - some done in 1600 and some in 1900 - of the same passage. It's fascinating to watch the same tale repeated in such a different way by two different centuries.
Martin C. Smith

Most people - and particularly people whose lives have nothing to do with books at all - are intrigued by the idea that somebody wants to listen to them and get it right.
Martin C. Smith