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Quotes by British Authors
"This is what I am. I have periods of enormous self-destructive depression, where I go completely off my trolley and lose all sight of reality and reason."
"They were keen for me still to play the piano, which I was going to, but 45 minutes of piano would be extremely boring. I like a bit of light and shade."
"To write simply is as difficult as to be good."
"I beg your pardon, one knows exactly what to think."
"I wanted to be successful, not famous."
"Always let your talent and tenacity do the talking. Never your tantrums or sense of self righteousness or entitlement. For it is your talent and tenacity that will carve out, shape and seal your possibilities and destiny."
"I recalled my father-in-law's aphorism "To fool a judge, feign fascination, but to bamboozle the whole court, feign boredom..." & I pretended to extract a speck from my eye."
"As with all my work, whether it's a leaf on a rock or ice on a rock, I'm trying to get beneath the surface appearance of things. Working the surface of a stone is an attempt to understand the internal energy of the stone."
"We are also further than ever from equality of opportunity."
"What was so good about it was that the set that they originally built stayed there, and weathered over the five years. It got five summers and five winters of weather. It became more and more authentic as we worked in it, and they added bits to it."
"Like all great travellers I have seen more than I remember and remember more than I have seen."
"Allan had come down wanting to do some sort of crucial music and I'd been involved in so-called Art Music and wanted to explore other areas - we were approaching it in some quite tongue-in-cheek ways and we had a lot of fun - we spent more time laughing than playing music."
"But I have the satisfaction, at the same time, to reflect that the impression to be made depends upon the consistency of the charge and the motives of the prosecutors."
"Know your magic, trust your magic, use your magic and know that you are a manifestation of life's magic."
"When we are young we think our troubles a mighty business " that the world is spread out expressly as a stage for the particular drama of our lives and that we have a right to rant and foam at the mouth if we are crossed. I have done enough of that in my time."
"My art is an attempt to reach beyond the surface appearance. I want to see growth in wood, time in stone, nature in a city, and I do not mean its parks but a deeper understanding that a city is nature too-the ground upon which it is built, the stone with which it is made."
"I don't remember ever being full of dislike and hatred for people, like some kids I've come across now."
"Life is an adventure I am enjoying creating."
"The Lord gets his best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction."
"It is necessary to relax your muscles when you can. Relaxing your brain is fatal."
"There's no point pretending to be someone or something we're not."
"Expectation and disappointment are far from friends but they are close relations."
"One's self-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of property which it is very unpleasant to find deprecated."
"A measuring jug is also vital when cooking rice, as this is always measured by volume rather than by weight."
"There's folks 'ud stand on their heads and then say the fault was i' their boots."
"The best careers advice to give to the young is 'Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for doing it.'"
"Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises."
"It is a pity that doing one's best does not always answer."
"It seems comfortable to sink down on a sofa in a corner, to look, to listen. Then it happens that two figures standing with their backs against the window appear against the branches of a spreading tree. With a shock of emotion one feels 'There are figures without features robed in beauty'. In the pause that follows while the ripples spread, the girl to whom one should be talking says to herself, 'He is old'. But she is wrong. It is not age; it is that a drop has fallen; another drop. Time has given the arrangement another shake. Out we creep from the arch of the currant leaves, out into a wider world. The true order of things - this is our perpetual illusion - is now apparent. Thus in a moment, in a drawing-room, our life adjusts itself to the majestic march of day across the sky."
"Learn to live in the heart's conscious, not the mind's."
"Better a false belief than no belief at all."
"One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one describes a story, to oneself or to the world, is by telling the story. It is a balancing act and it is a dream. The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map possible would be the territory, and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless. The tale is the map that is the territory.You must remember this."
"Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal, with takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice."
"Most films are rooted in a book or a comic strip, but I don't go out there saying I want to do adaptations."
"Great leaders don't need to act tough. Their confidence and humility serve to underscore their toughness."
"Thus times do shift, each thing his turn does hold; New things succeed, as former things grow old."
"I would recommend that anyone who wants to do comedy on TV to do radio first."
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