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Quotes by British Authors
"Always carry a corkscrew and the wine shall provide itself."
"I could start with Mandelstam, who was a huge influence on my early writing."
"Most Americans have some experience with nursing homes or other long term care settings, and nearly half have had a family member or close friend in a home in the past three years."
"When I was growing up, there were just the three channels, so as a nation we all sat down to the same meal at the end of the day. Now there's been this explosion."
"In reply, I can only plead that a discovery which seems to contradict the general tenor of previous investigations is naturally received with much hesitation."
"How can a rational being be ennobled by any thing that is not obtained by its own exertions?"
"Actually John, Paul Rutherford, and Trevor Watts, and several other rather well known English jazz musicians had got their training by joining the Air Force, which was a pretty standard way for people to get some kind of musical education in those days."
"There was, in my view, an unwritten contract with the reader that the writer must honour. No single element of an imagined world or any of its characters should be allowed to dissolve on an authorial whim. The invented had to be as solid and as self-consistent as the actual. This was a contract founded on mutual trust."
"Reason can be used only when looking critically back."
"The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes."
"I'd like to work with the missus, but there's nothing in the pipeline at the moment."
"Imagination only comes when you privilege the subconscious, when you make delay and procrastination work for you."
"I only have three scenes and each is a turn and she gets progressively drunker. It's all terribly funny and its main challenge is that it's so far away from what I usually do."
"I can make a lord, but only God can make a gentleman."
"My parents were in short street, so they had to go abroad to economize."
"I paint people not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be."
"I'd probably want to teach at university, because children would drive me insane. I suspect it would be English literature, Shakespeare and so forth. I've always been deeply, deeply in love with that kind of thing."
"I love this country, but the union jack leaves me cold."
"Be it jewel or toy, not the prize gives the joy, but the striving to win the prize."
"He looks around at his guests. All are prepared. A Latin grace; English would be his choice, but he will suit his company. Who cross themselves ostentatiously, in papist style. Who look at him, expectant. He shouts for the waiters. The doors burst open. Sweating men heave the platters to the table. It seems the meat is fresh, in fact not slaughtered yet. It is just a minor breach of etiquette. The company must sit and salivate. The Boleyns are laid at his hand to be carved."
"Looking as sharp as Sweeney Todd's razor, Roger struck a formidable figure as he donned his smart clothes and tie. At times, he would often talk of the night of his career when he fought John Conteh. He took the defeat of that match very personally and would often punch out a drunk who scoffed at his midlands accent and his past pride and glory."
"On the road to success some will always expect tragedy ... ditch your doubts and experience success with Cosmic Ordering."
"I worked three and then six hours a day in my studio with strict discipline and emotion. I obtained awards usually granted to other foreigners during the end-of-year admission tests."
"The great fact is that the source of all you desire comes from within! The answers to these needs will be found within you."
"My only companion from the outside world during nineteen years of isolation has been my personal hatred of Thursday Next. It's kind of like the old me suddenly taking over, and I promised myself that this was how I would act if I ever saw you.' 'I have the same thing, but with Tom Stoppard,' I said. 'You'd kill Tom Stoppard?' 'Not at all. I promised myself many years ago that I would throw myself at his feet and scream "I'm not worthy!" if I ever met him, so now if we're ever at the same party or something, I have to be at pains to avoid him. It would be undignified, you see-for him and for me."
"I was only interested in my scene, and I had to go through thousands and thousands of other scenes. I got my scene and I read it many, many, many, many, many times. That was my research."
"I was stuck with looking like a girl. As soon as I got out of music it was straight off to the hairdressers."
"When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter very much, do they?"
"I'm not in the advertising business, but I think it would be very nice if people went to see the film Hamlet, because it was made with love and integrity."
"I feel fantastically excited that we have a leader who fought for the leadership without compromising his quite challenging view that the party has to change."
"Let's not pretend that abortion isn't about the mass slaughter of innocents."
"Hitler's dictatorship rested on the constitutional foundation of a single law, the Enabling Law."
"We aren't victims of circumstance, we are co creators of our own reality. Self absorbed people may silence you, by projecting their undesirable traits on to you. You have power. You don't have to be a silent sheep. You can roar like a lion. Expression is what the narcissist, sociopath, and the psychopath fear the most when you start to speak for your self. When you start to stand up for your self - you become your greatest version. YOU are worthy. YOU have a choice to be around people, who are nurturing to your being and help you grow."
"Two years ago I hadn't even thought of the Woman in White, and I was doing a television show and I said I hadn't found a story and the next day somebody rang me and said have you ever thought of the Woman in White."
"Make your having dinner out become The Event of the Night, instead of just the beginning."
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