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Quotes by British Authors
"The biggest misconception people have about me is that I'm stupid."
"Next to a battle lost, the greatest misery is a battle gained."
"It is also a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are put forward until they are confirmed by theory."
"I don't need to hear Bill to go through a song. I need to hear Keith to go through a song. I know Bill will be playing what I'm playing anyway. I need to hear Keith because it's all there: the time, the chord changes, and all the licks you have to follow."
"Really the only thing holding a lot of records together is the personality of the singer, and the will to write all of these different things."
"The press Yazoo were receiving were focused on the voice, This obviously was about trends."
"There are many critics who have an idealised version of where my strengths lie."
"I still get excited about meeting celebrities, because I don't think I'm a celebrity myself."
"For some reason at 12 or 13, I just heard Gerry Milligan and fell in love with that, whatever it was called."
"God invented mankind because he loved silly stories."
"By priming your subconscious mind you are allowing it to run in the background, and that way you are actually sending out positive thoughtforms from your subconscious in the waking state!"
"Life was very simple. My parents had come from the North of England, which is a fairly rugged, bleak, hard-working part of England, and so there was not the expectation of luxury."
"I enjoy singing, and the instruments which truly move me are the horn, the trumpet and the cello."
"Occasionally I do things against my inner voice, but you really should go for the thing that touches you most-even if you don't quite know why it does."
"It was a superb agreement to end a war, but a very bad agreement to make a state. From now on, we have to part company with Dayton and try to build a modern democratic state, for which I have tried to lay the foundations."
"There happened to be guitar classes at the college, and there was a guitar teacher there with whom I used to play. In addition, I also would go out into country schools and teach little kids basic guitar and singing a few times a week."
"There's this wonderful first assistant and he'll be saying, 'Now Harry goes down among the dragons.' You have to hold yourself together. Because if you lose it for a second then you're sunk."
"What people say and feel about you when you've left a room is precisely your job while you are in it."
"It's better to take over and build upon an existing business than to start a new one."
"It couldn't sound like a dog, because K9 isn't a dog, but I made it sound as mechanical as possible."
"I went into a French restaraunt and asked the waiter, 'Have you got frog's legs?' He said, 'Yes,' so I said, 'Well hop into the kitchen and get me a cheese sandwich.'"
"Work is important to me. I want to do things for principle, not just for the sake of doing them."
"I don't always wear underwear. When I'm in the heat, especially, I can't wear it. Like, if I'm wearing a flower dress, why do I have to wear underwear?"
"The modern world is personal; people want to know intimate things."
"And, in a funny way, each death is different and you mourn each death differently and each death brings back the death you mourned earlier and you get into a bit of a pile-up."
"If a man thinks he is not conceited, he is very conceited indeed."
"Emotion is messy, contradictory... and true."
"A losing trade, I assure you, sir: literature is a drug."
"I admit that the eyes of the intellectually and culturally lively tend to glaze over at the mere mention of sociology, often with ample justification."
"This horror of pain is a rather low instinct and... if I think of human beings I've known and of my own life, such as it is, I can't recall any case of pain which didn't, on the whole, enrich life."
"The difficulty is not that great to die for a friend, the hard part is finding a friend worth dying for."
"There was a tacit understanding between them that 'liquor helped' growing more miserable with every glass one hoped for the moment of relief."
"In the enjoyment of a great myth we come nearest to experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an abstraction."
"Motherhood is a game you must enter with as much energy, willingness, and happiness as possible."
"These names: gay, queer, homosexual are limiting. I would love to finish with them. We're going to have to decide which terms to use and where we use them. For me to use the word "queer" is a liberation; it was a word that frightened me, but no longer."
"No two stories are the same. They may seem the same at first glance, but, once you take a closer look, give the story some of your time, you realise its unique qualities."
"I'm absolutely strict about it. When I land, I put my watch right, and I don't care what I feel like, I will go to bed at half past eleven. If that means going to bed early or late, that's what I live by. As soon as you get there, live by that time."
"Nuclear power will help provide the electricity that our growing economy needs without increasing emissions. This is truly an environmentally responsible source of energy."
"Torture is banned but in two-thirds of the world's countries it is still being committed in secret. Too many governments still allow wrongful imprisonment, murder or "disappearance" to be carried out by their officials with impunity."
"Smoking is hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, and dangerous to the lungs."
"One of the peculiar sins of the twentieth century which we've developed to a very high level is the sin of credulity. It has been said that when human beings stop believing in God they believe in nothing. The truth is much worse: they believe in anything."
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