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Quotes by English Authors
"We're real people and we're a band that's been playing on the scene for a long time. We've made a lot of friends, and one enemy we've always had was the NME. They've always basically slated us and they've basically never ever written about the music."
"As one may bring himself to believe almost anything he is inclined to believe, it makes all the difference whether we begin or end with the inquiry, 'What is truth?'"
"Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of scientific verity. On the contrary. The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make. If men were ever in a state in which which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts or evidence), then Fantasy would languish until they were cured. If they ever get into that state it would not seem at all impossible/ Fantasy will perish and become Morbid Delusion."
"Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard."
"Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it."
"He was a man who was charged with the work he did in life because he was not one to ask questions - not so much on account of any natural quality of discretion as because he simply could never think of any questions to ask....On the strength of which he had guaranteed himself regular employment for as long as he cared to live."
"There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another. This should be made clear to all who contemplate such a union. The avoidance of this pain is the beginning of wisdom, for it is strong enough to contaminate the rest of our lives."
"There's no substitute for live work to keep a band together."
"The clubs are good fun-having a laugh, really having a good time."
"In London, nobody comments on what you wear - they think that's not important to you or your state of well-being."
"There's such good writing now on television and I don't see a lot of great writing on films sadly."
"What we encounter in works of art and philosophy are objective versions of our own pains and struggles, evoked and defined in sound, language or image. Artists and philosophers not only show us what we have felt, they present our experiences more poignantly and intelligently than we have been able; they give shape to aspects of our lives that we recognise as our own, yet could never have understood so clearly on our own. They explain our condition to us, and thereby help us to be less lonely with, and confused by it."
"I should be soaring away with my head tilted slightly toward the gods, feeding on the caviar of Shakespeare. An actor must act."
"When you read and understand a poem, comprehending its rich and formal meanings, then you master chaos a little."
"I write plays not to make money, but to stop myself from going mad. Because it's my way of making the world rational to me."
"Before this government came to power, many failing schools were simply allowed to drift on in a pattern of continuing failure. The government is determined to break that pattern and is successfully doing so."
"In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all."
"No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead."
"Just the actual physics of putting it all together, you know, the latter period is actually quite fragmented in terms of the licenses and all those things so it makes a compilation of the full twenty years really a technical minefield."
"I think it will be found that experience, the true source and foundation of all knowledge, invariably confirms its truth."
"I do not know whether there be, as a rule, more vocal expression of the sentiment of love between a man and a woman, than there is between two thrushes. They whistle and call to each other, guided by instinct rather than by reason."
"I have no pity for myself either. So let it be Veronal. But I wish Hercule Poirot had never retired from work and come here to grow vegetable marrows."
"Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world."
"Reason with most people means their own opinions."
"It was quite a challenge to make people eat crab ice cream."
"But, said Alice, if the world has absolutely no sense, who's stopping us from inventing one?"
"As for sex, the last of the great words, it was just a cocktail term for an excitement that bucked you up for a while, then left you more raggy than ever."
"There are some sounds that English singers find quite difficult to manipulate."
"A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out."
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