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Quotes by British Authors

"Each story we approach in the same way, with curiosity and interest and determination to get behind the image."


"It seemed that rebellion must have an unassailable base, something guarded not merely from attack, but from the fear of it: such a base as we had in the Red Sea Parts, the desert, or in the minds of the men we converted to our creed."


"Ice dance should not be seen as a rigid conformist form of figure skating. There is a great deal of freedom and originality to be had."

"A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can."

"I'm trying to die correctly, but it's very difficult, you know."


"Through a strange kind of geographic arrogance, Europeans like to think that the world was a silent, dark, unknown place until they trooped out and discovered it."

"When a benevolent mind contemplates the republic of Lycurgus, its admiration is mixed with a degree of horror."

"If you want to be watched by governments, all you have to do is tell people that you research radiation."

"The team should have implicit confidence in the captain's decisions."

"Playing golf is like learning a foreign language."

"Artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself."

"The more you give the less your poor."

"I've had much nastier things said about me in the British press than in the Bosnian press."

"Never call an accountant a credit to his profession; a good accountant is a debit to his profession."


"It makes you more open, it gives you perspective, having a child."

"Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities - because it is the quality which guarantees all others."

"Well it has been very exciting and very changing as well. Celebrating the 40th year and having the album out and the Channel 4 documentary and I resigned from Blind Date."

"Actual human discourse happens within a number of contexts, not in some sort of unified public forum."

"I think I've still got a bit of a sado-masochistic streak in me, because if I'm not going to be restricted by corsets and covered in lace, then I still wind up wearing an ape-mask over my face. I do wonder how I get myself in these situations!"

"Affirmations: "I love & respect my mind, body, spirit." & "I do what best nurtures all parts of myself." & "I thrive on wholeness." Namaste!"

"One said of suicide, As long as one has brains one should not blow them out. And another answered, But when one has ceased to have them, too often one cannot."

"Why do we have this desire to tease the innocent? Is it envy?"

"It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflicts pain."

"Fire's the sun, unwindin' itself out o' the wood."

"The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell."

"A little in drink, but at all times your faithful husband."

"Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword."


"We carry within us the wonders we seek without us."


"My earliest professional musical experiences were really as a session player, and every day was an adventure. Three sessions a day, every day, and you never knew who you would be working with until you arrived at the studio."

"They say it is better to be poor and happy than rich and miserable, but how about a compromise like moderately rich and just moody?"


"I never wanted to do political satire because it seems too surface to me."

"I am somewhat exhausted, I wonder how a battery feels when it pours electricity into a non-conductor?"

"I was always playing the Hammond Organ back to front even during the days of the Nice, going back to 1968. Really what I was doing there, was choosing notes at random and trying to make some sense of them, improvising back to front."


"We must not expect a full-scale peaceful revolution every time a Labour Government is elected."


"Dinner a time when . . . one should eat wisely but not too well and talk well but not too wisely."

"Surgeons are a singular brotherhood, Adam. To us, people aren't sacred beings crafted in the Almighty's image, no, people are joints of meat; diseased, leathery meat, yes, but meat ready for the skewer & the spit." He mimicked my usual voice, very well. "'But why *me*, Henry, are we not friends?' Well, Adam, even friends are made out of meat."

"Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom."

"If you want to sing out, sing out, and if you want to be free, be free, cause there's a million ways to be, you know that there are."

"But the answer to how to live is to stop thinking about it. And just to live. But you're doing that anyway. However you intellectualise it, you still just live."

"It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement; the greatest source of visual beauty; the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living."
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