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Quotes by English Authors
"The work of Henry James has always seemed divisible by a simple dynastic arrangement into three reigns: James I, James II, and the Old Pretender."
"I have grown up but that should be a positive thing. When you look at a photo album it's lovely to remember being so young but it's also good to know you grew up!"
"In 1940 I came across a record by Jimmy Yancey. I can't say how important that record is. From then on, all I wanted to do was play the blues."
"I just feel, in life, I'm searching for something I can rely on, something that's constant and something that's going to guide me through. And I felt that the Northern Star is a very beautiful image of that."
"One of the greatest tragedies in mankind's entire history may be that morality was hijacked by religion."
"I think I've probably re-invented myself three or four times now, if that's what one calls it."
"Every gesture is a gesture from the blood, every expression a symbolic utterance... Everything is of the blood, of the senses."
"When you extend life span, that's really something. That's hard to do."
"In all highly civilised communities Pretence is prominent, and sooner or later invades the regions of Literature."
"I love Neil Finn. I've loved everything he's done since Split Enz."
"If I had been asked to write 1,200 words for a newspaper tomorrow, on any subject, I would just do it rather than leave a white hole in the page. And I think it's a very healthy attitude to take to writing anything."
"We enjoy change and freshness, and disco was only one area we've delved into."
"How is it you can talk so nicely?' Alice said, hoping to get it into a better temper by a compliment. 'I've been in many gardens before, but none of the flowers could talk.''Put your hand down, and feel the ground,' said the Tiger-lily. 'Then you'll know why.'Alice did so. 'It's very hard,' she said, 'but I don't see what that has to do with it.''In most gardens,' the Tiger-lily said, 'they make the beds too soft - so that the flowers are always asleep."
"There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls,Doing more murder in this loathsome world,Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell."
"The first duty of a state is to see that every child born therein shall be well housed, clothed, fed and educated till it attains years of discretion."
"Clearly any film company that makes a film is always going to talk about sequels particularly if they see something as being successful, which Werewolf was."
"As soon as you start writing about how human beings interact with each other socially, you're into politics, aren't you?"
"I won't say I didn't like it at the time, the sex, that is, because I wouldn't have let him do it at all if that had been the case."
"People who believe in flying saucers are the scrapings from the bottom."
"Clap an extinguisher upon your irony if you are unhappily blessed with a vein of it."
"I felt convinced that however it might have been in former times, in the present stage of the world, no man's faculties could be developed, no man's moral principle be enlarged and liberal, without an extensive acquaintance with books."
"The writer I feel the most affinity with - you said you felt my books are 19th century novels, I think they're 18th century novels - is Fielding, Henry Fielding, he's the guy who does it for me."
"You get towards the end of life - no, not life itself, but of something else: the end of any likelihood of change in that life. You are allowed a long moment of pause, time enough to ask the question: what else have I done wrong?"
"If, like Harry Keogh, I could talk to the dead - God, there are an awful lot of people I would like to speak to! Not least my father. Being in the army for 22 years, I didn't see enough of him, and I know there are a great many things I could have learned from him."
"Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow."
"I wanted to look at the upper-middle-class scene since the war, and in particular my generation's part in it. We had spent our early years as privileged members of a privileged class. How were we faring in the Age of the Common Man? How ought we to be faring?"
"I know as a manager you have to abide by the chairman's decisions. But his decisions were this team, that team, this player, that player. The chairman is a control freak."
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