THE BEST QUOTATIONS FROM @HISTORYCRACKS.

Lawrence Osborne

This is what I have been reading/tweeting lately:

• Backpacking: just another twist in the history of Western voyeurism and exploitation (Tessa Hadley)
• Making love to an older man: you get the heavy hinterland of his worldly experience driven in behind the fine point of the moment (Tessa Hadley)
• Old carpets: have a sweet rancid sponginess that my English shoes like (Lawrence Osborne)
• Rowing: warmed him and made his back feel strong as if his shoulder muscles extended from his neck to his waist (David Mamet)
• End of story: The listeners felt as if they had let out a breath…and slowly began to rearrange themselves (David Mamet)
• Wealth: We wanted our American plenty to show, but not too much. We wanted to make it clear that our tastes were simpler than our means would have permitted (Wallace Stegner)
• People without a past of their own: Americans hang around national parks that enclose other people’s archeology (Wallace Stegner)
• Autism? He adopted an avuncular expression and squeezed my shoulder, one-two-three, an autistic mime of sincerity (Hari Kunzru)
• Intolerance: An address book filled with scribbled-out names (Hari Kunzru)

Stay tuned for another instalment of Kafka's letter to his father. Will post on Sunday.

I AM @HISTORYCRACKS.

Authors must tweet, or so I’m told, so I started tweeting a year ago and have gathered some 450 followers – thank you, people, whoever and wherever you are.

For those out there who have never read my tweets, here is what I do:

I post historical photos, like this Bolivian hat below, a present from the man who built the reed boat in which Thor Heyerdahl crossed the Atlantic.

Or of places I’ve visited, like this one: a rock sculpture at the back of LACMA in Los Angeles.

I never thought I’d tweet words. For one thing I didn’t think I could fit anything worthwhile saying into 140 characters. But other people apparently manage just fine, as in these examples:

• Hair: thick and seemingly warm enough to be the vest of some fabulous…creature (Howard Jacobson)
• Backstory: They don’t tell you in movies where people grew up…no history, no past, just them (Doctorow)
• There is no getting on, or getting over, just getting in (Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal)
• Keeping your distance: He engaged in verbal jabbing to maintain perimeter (Tad Friend)
• Habsburg soldiers: Best dressed army in the world (Edmund De Waal)

Like my selection of quotes? Check my tweets for more: @historycracks.