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Quotes by British Authors
"The film depends on the audience's belief in this relationship."
"Maybe the most that you can expect from a relationship that goes bad is to come out of it with a few good songs."
"I do not like these painted faces that look all alike; and I think women are foolish to dull their expression and obscure their personality with powder, rouge, and lipstick."
"I couldn't imagine what Fox thought they were doing, contemplating such a jagged protagonist for a prime-time drama. I only knew that I wanted the role very much."
"You know what's the worst? Having realistic, ordinary expectations taken out of your reach by seemingly unrealistic, extraordinary circumstances."
"I am made of words. Cut me & I bleed sentences. Read me, & I speak to your soul."
"A touch less ego and dash more humility will improve the quality of anything you turn your hand to."
"Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long."
"Birth-control is effecting, and promising to effect, many functions in our social life."
"Forgive and set your self free. When we forgive, we heal our own anger and hurt and are able to let love lead again. It's like spring cleaning for our heart."
"The practice of forgiving is a sequential practice that begins with excusing someone."
"There comes a point when a man must refuse to answer to his leader if he is also to answer to his own conscience."
"William James used to preach the 'will to believe.' For my part, I should wish to preach the 'will to doubt' ... what is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite."
"It's true that I'm taking a break from writing a regular column to do other things but it's got nothing to do with what dear Simon has or has not written."
"The loss of liberty which must attend being a wife was of all things the most horrible to my imagination."
"Occasionally I have come across a last patch of snow on top of a mountain in late May or June. There's something very powerful about finding snow in summer."
"If I've learned one lesson from all that's happened to me, it's that there is no such thing as the biggest mistake of your existence. There's no such thing as ruining your life. Life's a pretty resilient thing, it turns out."
"It's not a very popular subject amongst my audience, who are by nature more internationalist, but I don't choose what to write about, I don't choose my subjects, they kind of choose me."
"I'm always conscious of the fact that I am part of a profession that is 80% permanently unemployed. So, to be working in any sense is to be privileged."
"In the best material, you always should be able to somehow make a case for a story to be transposed to any other time."
"Not being impressed by anyone or anything is one of the surest paths to a life of mediocrity."
"Spent the fortnight gone in the music room reworking my year's fragments into a 'sextet for overlapping soloists': piano, clarinet, 'cello, flute, oboe, and violin, each in its own language of key, scale, and color. In the first set, each solo is interrupted by its successor; in the second, each interruption is recontinued, in order. Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan't know until it's finished, and by then it'll be too late."
"My grandmother whispering to herself, over and over, "David is in heaven now, David is in heaven now,' my mind repeating Schrodinger's Cat, Schrodinger's Cat."
"All the best stories are but one story in reality - the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape."
"Against the beautiful and the clever and the successful, one can wage a pitiless war, but not against the unattractive: then the millstone weighs on the breast."
"Food is your body's fuel. Without fuel, your body wants to shut down."
"It's too late to change the world, but, hopefully it's not too late to change ourselves."
"A fat man eating quails while children are begging for bread is a disgusting sight, but you are less likely to see it when you are within the sound of the guns."
"You can influence a whole plethora of things, and just as they can influence you then you can influence them."
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