top of page
.png){kind=small}
Quotes by British Authors
"The dog and the rabbit are telling us not to chase unattainable material goals."
"It's vital that the monarchy keeps in touch with the people. It's what I try and do."
"It's moving in the right direction. It was in decline under the previous administration."
"Cheating on a quiz show? That's sort of like plagiarizing a comic strip."
"Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it."
"It makes me so desperately sad to witness just how unforgivably wretched our world has become."
"If the work of art is to continue pursuing the vision of both being in and of the world but nevertheless in some fashion being more than just one more object to the mounting clutter, this is the specific point, I think, where this must be assured."
"In sharp contrast to the idea that this stage of life is enviable, we hear high levels of anxiety about getting old, anxieties about health, mobility, access to facilities, simple routine care and attention."
"You can never fully put your finger on the reason why you're suddenly, inexplicably compelled to explore one life as opposed to another."
"A fan club is a group of people who tell an actor he's not alone in the way he feels about himself."
"There just seems to be more acceptance now of... other kinds of British films, than the picture-postcard ones."
"I found that if I got up on the stage to entertain the troops I could make them shut up and look."
"If you're not balanced, your mind's not balanced... my fuse went."
"Today's youth cannot miss something they have never known, but I fear that there are no current fictional characters whose impact and influence will last with such abiding affection into their 'sore and yellow' as this splendid man's creations have in mine!"
"No, I've never thought that I was gay. And that's not something you think. It's something you know."
"A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender."
"Plagiarists, at least, have the merit of preservation."
"I didn't really escape that gravity until I moved 300 miles south to go to college at 18, where authorship no longer seemed something liable to induce vengeful punishment."
"Among many people with you, but I only can see you."
"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."
"You can't reason yourself back into cheerfulness any more than you can reason yourself into an extra six inches in height."
"I was moved beyond words. The train ride over the mountains from lake Titticaca to Cusco reminded me of Africa where I grew up; and 4 days walking on the Inca Trail, then more in the jungle, just magnificent - time, space, and splendour. Our planet is superb!"
"The only way to save a rhinoceros is to save the environment in which it lives, because there's a mutual dependency between it and millions of other species of both animals and plants."
"Love is the only answer to every question. It is the only thing that will serve you in every situation. It is the route and the destination. It is medication, liberation and should be at the heart of and expression of your vocation."
"Everything we did was criticized. For about thirty years we lived with the world against us, accusing us of things we didn't do!"
"I am pleased now that I have lived in a gay as well as a religious ghetto, though it hasn't been very comfortable. Taken together, their limitations cancel each other out and I have seen the world more kindly and more honestly."
"Hobbies are apt to run away with us, you know; it doesn't do to be run away with. We must keep the reins."
"There has never been any country at every moment so virtuous and so wise that it has not sometimes needed to be saved from itself."
"It was amazing that during rehearsals, without any of the costume on, the character was there complete. It just happened. Half the time, I didn't know I was doing it."
"There is a magic in the memory of a schoolboy friendship. It softens the heart and even affects the nervous system of those who have no heart."
"There are several paths one can take, but not every path is open to you."
"I run six-to-eight miles a day, plus weights and aerobics in the lunch hour. I also lie a lot, which keeps me thin."
"You know you lose a lot of social skills if you're a writer. You spend too long alone. And its forced me to address that."
"At all events, arbitration is more rational, just, and humane than the resort to the sword."
"My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world."
"The charm of variety there was not, nor the excitement of incident; but I liked peace so well, and sought stimulus so little, that when the latter came I almost felt it a disturbance, and rather still wished it had held aloof."
"It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset."
"The only people who benefit from lawsuits are lawyers. I think we made a couple of them rich."
"There comes a point when a man must refuse to answer to his leader if he is also to answer to his own conscience."
"Martin guitars have now brought out, you know, on a more traditional level, the Stephen Stills' model of Martin guitars. It's beautiful. I just went inside. I bought one immediately."
"In the Scottish Orkneys, the little stone houses with their single large room and central hearth had an extraordinary range of built-in furniture."
"Boxing is the toughest and loneliest sport in the world."
bottom of page