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Quotes by British Authors

"I was happy, but happy is an adult word. You don't have to ask a child about happy, you see it. They are or they are not. Adults talk about being happy because largely they are not. Talking about it is the same as trying to catch the wind. Much easier to let it blow all over you. This is where I disagree with the philosophers. They talk about passionate things but there is no passion in them. Never talk happiness with a philosopher."

"My job had been to get the package from point A to point B and what happened after that did not need to concern me. I was just the mule."


"I was put off by people at school - my cabbage wasn't as good as other people's, you know, so that put me off."

"There are always ways to control your environment."

"Old buildings whisper to us in the creaking of floorboards and rattling of windowpanes."

"Have you no idea of progress, of development?""I have seen them both in an egg," said Caspian. "We call it 'Going Bad' in Narnia."

"Don't settle for a half empty glass, always go for a full one!"


"When I was about to break a world record and become well known, my mother used to say that for her the important thing was for me to become a doctor - a career which had not been possible in her generation and in her society. Sport was something to be set aside."

"The last thing I would attempt to do is to buy clothes for a child I didn't know well."


"The modern computer hovers between the obsolescent and the nonexistent."

"But very quickly they all became grave again: for, as you know, there is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. It is too good to waste on jokes."


"Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another."


"Since 1970, relationships can be more volatile, jobs more ephemeral, geographical mobility more intensified, stability of marriage weaker."

"Happiness, as is evident, depends partly upon external circumstances and partly upon oneself."

"You simply feel out for the thoughtwaves of those others with a similar thought, the attraction between minds. As you are all aware, like attracts like!"

"No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy."


"I know that I shall die struggling for breath, and I know that I shall be horribly afraid. I know that I shall not be able to keep myself from regretting bitterly the life that has brought me to such a pass; but I disown that regret. I now, weak, old, diseased, poor, dying, hold still my soul in my hands, and I regret nothing."

"We only had enough money really to cut 10 things and be in there for a month because it's expensive, you know. And, singer/songwriters, today are lucky if they can get a deal, you know. So, we actually worked so fast that we really cut 20 things."

"The romantic embrace can only be compared with music and with prayer."

"We see, surrounding the narrow raft illuminated by the flickering light of human comradeship, the dark ocean on whose rolling waves we toss for a brief hour; all the loneliness of humanity amid hostile forces is concentrated on the individual soul, which must struggle alone, with what of courage it can command, against the whole weight of a universe that cares nothing for its hopes and fears. Victory, in this struggle with the powers of darkness, is the true baptism into the glorious company of heroes, the true initiation into the overmastering beauty of human existence."

"You cannot go on 'explaining away' for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on 'seeing through' things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it."

"Change is the medium to become who you wish to be."

"I always listen to a lot of different music when I am working on a project."

"Again two manufacturers may employ the same amount of fixed, and the same amount of circulating capital; but the durability of their fixed capitals may be very unequal."

"Luck relies on chance, labor on character."

"A cake is a very good test of an oven: if it browns too much on one side and not on the other, it's not your fault - you need to have your oven checked."

"In conversation, humor is worth more than wit and easiness more than knowledge."

"Working together was a bit of a disaster. I'd tell him his ideas were cr*p and he'd say the same about mine."

"I think the thing's that perhaps sad really is that younger people haven't come in and I think it must have been absolutely fantastic to have worked in the 50's when you had all of the great Broadway composers and when West Side Story didn't win the Tony Award."

"You see that's what I think is such a terrible, terrible betrayal, the trust that people have in government."


"Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species."
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