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Quotes by English Authors
"To be a man's own fool is bad enough, but the vain man is everybody's."
"It is right and natural that generous minds while in the twenties should think the books which try to reform the world's wrong the greatest of all."
"James Joyce - an essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be universally recognized."
"Then all the foreigners started coming over. I don't mind that but a lot of teams are laying out fortunes for ordinary players and that's no good for our youngsters coming through."
"Between Scott on the earlier side and Dickens and Thackeray on the other, there was an immense production of novels, illustrated by not a few names which should rank high in the second class, while some would promote more than one of them to the first."
"It doesn't really feel like it's got anything to do with me. I mean, I know I wrote it, and all that and invented the characters and made it up, but it's Mike's film, so doing the press and stuff, it feels a little bit inauthentic. I was just one component of it."
"A lot of people, some of them close to me as well, have said that I sacrificed myself by doing what I did in bringing Terry on board. I didn't see it that way."
"Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease."
"Now there is a new group every week; it seems like everybody and anybody can get into the charts."
"The royal throne of kings this scepter'd isle This earth of majesty this seat of Mars This other Eden demi-paradise This fortress built by nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war This happy breed of men this little world This precious stone set in the silver sea."
"But we are not in the world to be good but to change it."
"I wouldn't say I was the best manager in the business. But I was in the top one."
"It took me years to understand that words are often as important as experience, because words make experience last."
"He never is alone that is accompanied with noble thoughts."
"Look at all the things that can go wrong for men. There's the nothing-happening-at-all problem, the too-much-happening-too-soon problem, the dismal-droop-after-a-promising-beginning problem; there's the size-doesn't-matter-except-in-my-case problem, the failing-to-deliver-the-goods problem, and what do women have to worry about? A handful of cellulite? Join the club. A spot of I-wonder-how-I-rank? Ditto."
"I am only conscious of any satisfaction in Scientific Reading or thinking when it rounds off into a poetical generality and vagueness."
"Where ambition can cover its enterprises, even to the person himself, under the appearance of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of passions."
"The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it."
"Ten years ago I was not heavily involved in the film world but on reflection it was a boom time with the mineral boom happening, so there was immense growth for industrial training films, documentaries to do with the mining, and the outback world."
"I'm so loud, as if I know what I'm on about, but deep inside, I'm so insecure. Just a little girl."
"To destroy is still the strongest instinct in nature."
"It is always good policy to tell the truth unless of course you are an exceptionally good liar."
"The reader deserves an honest opinion. If he doesn't deserve it, give it to him anyhow."
"Does there, I wonder, exist a being who has read all, or approximately all, that the person of average culture is supposed to have read, and that not to have read is a social sin? If such a being does exist, surely he is an old, a very old man."
"You must believe in God, in spite of what the clergy say."
"At a certain stage in his evolution, man himself had been able to lay hold upon a higher order of things, which raised him above the level of the beasts that perish, and enabled him to see, at least in the distance, the shining towers of the City of God."
"To a certain extent, this tour is a celebration of individuality and that you can invent and reinvent yourself. You should have the power to be able to do that. Sexuality is a part of that. It should release you. It doesn't have to be an issue. It shouldn't box you in."
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