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Quotes by British Authors
"It's very schizophrenic because I like a lot of very straight pop, like Small Faces, Stones, Kinks; and on the other hand, I like a lot of avant garde things."
"I think, well, I've had a shit of a life, all things considered. It wasn't fair. Everyone I've ever loved is dead, and my leg hurts all the bloody time... But I think, any God that can do sunsets like that, a different one every night... 'Strewth, well, you've got to respect the old bastard, haven't you?"
"It is about looking straight ahead and not shifting that focus. Keep your eyes on the prize!"
"I can't talk you in terms of time --your time and my time are different."
"There is another more psychological obstacle to the full development of love in the modern world, and that is the fear that many people feel of not preserving their individuality in tact. This is a foolish and rather modern terror. Individuality is not an end in itself; it is something that must enter into fructifying contact with the world, and in so doing must lose its separateness. An individuality which is kept in a glass case withers, whereas on e that is freely expended in human contacts becomes enriched."
"I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not. They are strangers in their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood or the populous streets in which they have played, remain but a place of passage. They may spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred and remain aloof among the only scenes they have ever known. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that sends men far and wide in the search for something permanent, to which they may attach themselves. Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history."
"Writing's a lot like cooking. Sometimes the cake won't rise, no matter what you do, and every now and again the cake tastes better than you ever could have dreamed it would."
"I got very fit that week with all the running around that we di. I was always last, because I can't run as fast as everyone else. I'm useless at running."
"Mother used to say escape is never further than the nearest book."
"Her profile as well as her stature and bearing seemed to gain the more dignity from her plain garments, which by the side of provincial fashion gave her the impressiveness of a fine quotation from the Bible,-or from one of our elder poets,-in a paragraph of to-day's newspaper."
"I left my marriage knowing I'd have to work. I have."
"I never taste the wine first in restaurants, I just ask the waiter to pour."
"Whoever incites anger has a strong insurance against indifference."
"The food we were given was no more than eatable, but the patron was not mean about drink; he allowed us two litres of wine a day each, knowing that if a plongeur is not given two litres he will steal three."
"The only way forward, if we are going to improve the quality of the environment, is to get everybody involved."
"In real terms, there is a greater disparity of earnings between the very rich and the very poor."
"Television is more interesting than people. If it were not we should have people standing in the corner of our room."
"I appeal to all Britishers to answer this call to arms for the defence of all the principles that we Englishmen have been the first to proclaim in the world."
"I think it was that we were really seasoned musicians. We had serious roots that spanned different cultures, obviously the blues."
"All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on."
"You never know yourself till you know more than your body."
"Probably the simplest hypothesis... is that there may be a slow process of annihilation of matter."
"I am formally accountable to the steering board of the PIC, and I meet with nine ambassadors from the PIC every week. I have to have the capitals' broad agreement with what I do."
"But let's be clear. We're talking about a country where there's no opposition. As leader he can ignore Parliament and - sorry that's Tony Blair isn't it? Um, so he doesn't even have to ask the country before he goes to war - sorry that's still Tony Blair."
"The solution to a problem changes the nature of the problem."
"Overall, the anarchy was the most creative of all periods of Japanese culture for in it there appeared the greatest landscape painting, the culmination of the skill of landscape gardening and the arts of flower arrangement, and the No drama."
"I started on the fringes of journalism as a cartoonist on The Daily Mail."
"An unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books once only. . . . We do not enjoy a story fully at the first reading. Not till the curiosity, the sheer narrative lust, has been given its sop and laid asleep, are we at leisure to savour the real beauties. Till then, it is like wasting great wine on a ravenous natural thirst which merely wants cold wetness."
"Still, whether we like it or not, the task of speeding up the decrease of the human population becomes increasingly urgent."
"I have always been willing to take the blame for the things I have done."
"I have never believed you make your case stronger by bad-mouthing your opposition."
"Autumn is leaving its mellowness behind for its spiky, rotted stage. Don't remember summer even saying goodbye."
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