These pieces, by turns realistic, resigned, and philosophical, bring to mind perhaps the single best writerly observation I know, Flaubert's notion that "talent is long patience".
Unlike his Greek forerunner, however, he's the one who's been besieged by suitors, while with "long patience," his true second love sits calmly waiting, before her loom, as he makes his lucky way toward her.
The riots were a sort of harsh crash course for bewildered citizens who believed it could not happen or trusted to the long patience of the English character to accept the bad times somehow.
"After we exercised our long patience, we found ourselves pushed and obligated to exercise our right and duty to defend our people," said a statement by the Iran-backed group, which is trying to dislodge Israeli troops from southern Lebanon.
THE once-obscure category of ultrashort-term bond funds is attracting new money, and for two reasons: Mutual fund investors -- their long patience with the faltering stock market severely strained -- see them as havens.
A few months after Brixton's Bloody Saturday, in the spring of 1981, our London correspondent, Mollie Panter-Downes, summed up the aftermath: The riots were a sort of harsh educational crash course for bewildered citizens who had believed that it could not happen here or had trusted to the long patience of the English character to accept the bad times somehow.
Not least when, already a little late, they start the show with several long, patience-testing minutes of piercing synth ripple playing to an empty stage.
Before long, their patience was rewarded.
How long that patience will endure remains unclear.
Be the Worst You Can Be: Life's Too Long for Patience and Virtue.
(He recently wrote a book titled "Be The Worst You Can Be: Life's Too Long for Patience And Virtue").
