John Mole Quotes

#1. What troubled me most is that although I was an unwilling observer, I felt guilty myself as if something in what I witnessed touched a shameful and repressed desire.

John Mole

#2. The combination of having to cooperate, the pleasure of keeping it going and the demonstration of superiority are at the heart of Greek life. You collaborate and compete at the same time.

John Mole

#3. 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.

John Mole

#4. One of the first lessons of life in Greece is that everything is difficult and nothing is impossible.

John Mole

#5. It was my first dead body and I waited for the appropriate feelings. I didn't know what feelings to expect, which was worse than realising that I had none.

John Mole

#6. It often happens that when you look at familiar things through someone else's eyes you see them as you have never seen them before.

John Mole

#7. Where I come from money isn't to be talked about or flaunted in front of strangers. But Ajax snatched up the wad and counted it out loud, ceremonially, slapping the notes down on the table while the witnesses mouthed the amounts. It was all so public and embarrassing.

John Mole

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

John Mole

#9. 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.

John Mole

#10. 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.

John Mole

#11. 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.

John Mole

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

John Mole

#13. 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.

John Mole

#14. I was sometimes irritated by the unrelenting inquisitiveness and criticism, but there was no shortage of help or advice or just someone to talk to if I needed it. It was hard to imagine a foreigner descending on an English community and being welcomed with such immediate acceptance and hospitality.

John Mole

#15. 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.

John Mole