Please allow me to introduce myself
I’m a man of wealth and taste
I’ve been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man’s soul to waste
Taken from the song Sympathy for the Devil by The Rolling Stones, from their acclaimed studio album Beggar’s Banquet (1968). I just had to add in another post for the English rock band as I saw them live earlier this year, to add to the songs of Gimme Shelter, Paint it Black and Ruby Tuesday
Meeting you with a view to a kill
Face to face in secret places, feel the chill
Nightfall covers me, but you know the plans I’m making
Still overseas, could it be the whole Earth opening wide
A sacred why, a mystery gaping inside.
Taken from the song A View to a Kill by Duran Duran, from the 1982 James Bond film of the same name. As well as just failing to reach number one in the UK, it remains the only song from the franchise to top the US charts. Is it your favourite film from the series? Here are mine.
Someone must have been spreading lies about Josef K, for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one morning.
The opening lines of the novella The Trial by Czech-born German language writer Franz Kafka. Published posthumously in 1925, (but believed to be written around 1914 / 1915), it tells of an innocent man’s struggles to clear against a charge he is never made aware of. I’ve long been a fan of his work and quoted my favourite of his short stories here,
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
Taken from the novel ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ by Charles Dickens (1859)
Alex Raphael 