top of page
.png){kind=small}
Quotes by British Authors
"Be oblivious to city high-rises, work-related stress and microwave popcorn."
"Usually, in the studio, on this sort of thing... you just go out and have a play over it, and see what comes, and it's usually - mostly - the first take that's the best one, and you find yourself repeating yourself thereafter."
"A study in scarlet, eh? Why shouldn't we use a little art jargon? There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it."
"It has always been difficult for Man to realize that his life is all an art. It has been more difficult to conceive it so than to act it so. For that is always how he has more or less acted it."
"One always spoke of her like that in the third person as though she were not there. Sometimes she seemed invisible like peace."
"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are."
"The problem is going to be finding the right words and implementing it in a way that is really dealing with people that are inciting and not preventing honest discussion of the underlying causes of this horrendous political situation the world is in now."
"I remember seeing some little wrinkles in my early 30s and thinking they were interesting. But you know the horror of it is that the screen image has to be perfect."
"The beginning of Book Three is the last one that I drew, where V's conducting the 1812 overture."
"You see, nature will do exactly what it must, and if we are a hindrance to its development, to even its destructive powers to reform itself and we are in a way, we will go."
"Not being able to touch is sometimes as interesting as being able to touch."
"At the art college in Edinburgh someone arranged for some London groups to come up and play. I was in a supporting band, with Bernie Green I think. Derek Bailey was one of the visiting musicians. He seemed to like my playing and asked me to come down to London."
"I think it's useful to experience other types of dance and other cultures, and the life of a classical dancer these days is certainly not all tutus! So experience of other dance forms is a good idea."
"Muddle is the extra unknown personality in any committee."
"My philosophy is, unless you're sick and need help, why bother?"
"It's quite sad that so many children go through life unsure whether their parents love them or not."
"The colors I use may clash or vibrate against one another but this is done intentionally."
"The answer was that in Burundi, having a clean bill of health has taken on a very particular meaning: unless and until you have paid for your hospital treatment, you simply can't leave, you are in effect a captive."
"The only people who benefit from lawsuits are lawyers. I think we made a couple of them rich."
"I am always easy of belief when the creed pleases me."
"In a world where you can get a spare kidney, a black-market Picasso or a ticket to ride into space, why can't I see some actual sex? Some actual fucking from people who want to fuck each other? Some chick in an outfit I halfway respect, having the time of her life? I have MONEY. I'm willing to PAY for this. I AM NOW A 35-YEAR-OLD WOMAN, AND I JUST WANT A MULTI-BILLION-DOLLAR INTERNATIONAL PORN INDUSTRY WHERE I CAN SEE A WOMAN COME. I just want to see a good time."
"I was rather disappointed, because the one thing I wanted to gain from that opportunity was to add something to his music, and have him add something to mine."
"They say that every snowflake is different. If that were true, how could the world go on? How could we ever get up off our knees? How could we ever recover from the wonder of it?"
"I ought to rejoice in the fact that our principal rival has died, but I don't."
"In the first play, the crisis is Thomas More. In the second it's Anne Boleyn. In the third book, and the third play, it's crisis every day, an overlapping series of only just negotiable horrors. It's climbing and climbing. Then a sudden abrupt fall - within days."
"I put it to the great man [Hitchcock], the key to fictitious terror is partition or containment: so long as the Bates Motel is sealed off from our world, we want to peer in, like at a scorpion enclosure. But a film that shows the world is a Bates Motel, well, that's... the stuff of Buchloe, dystopia, depression. We'll dip our toes in a predatory, amoral, godless unive3rse, but only our toes."
"If you're a good parent, see the changes that are happening in your kids."
"Listeners will wonder what an Englishman is doing on the German radio tonight. You can imagine that before taking this step I hoped that someone better qualified than me would come forward."
"Always blow your own trumpet, blowing someone else's is unhygienic."
bottom of page