Quotes by John Niven - Page 2

Don't get me wrong: there are aspects of buying music online that I love. Instantly being able to hear a song the moment it crosses your mind? Where's the downside? However, I do feel for those too young to remember the thrill of going record shopping.
John Niven /
Buying
Crosses
Online
Shopping
Thrill
Love Music Moment
Aspects
Downside
Instantly
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If you watch a group of schoolchildren eating lunch together, you cannot help but notice how it is a comically Lilliputian version of the adult thing - the cocked eyebrows of conversation, the reaching for condiments, the shovelling of food into tiny mouths.
John Niven /
Conversation
Eating
Eyebrows
Lunch
Mouths
Reaching
Tiny
Together
Adult
Version
Watch
Group
Help
Notice
Schoolchildren
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I am very fortunate. I am a glass-half-full eternal optimist type to the point of being a moron. But I would never presume to know how hard it goes for others. How, for some people, just getting though the day is an incredible effort that can hardly be borne.
John Niven /
Effort
Eternal
Fortunate
Moron
Type
Borne
Day I Am People
Hardly
Presume
Some People
Though
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I returned from my last L.A. visit to find myself tipping the scales like Homer Simpson when he tries to gain enough weight to qualify as disabled to be allowed to work from home. All I was missing was his kaftan and Fat Guy Hat. So, I decided it was time to diet.
John Niven /
Diet
Decided
Disabled
Missing
Scales
Tipping
Weight
Time Work Home
Fat
Allowed
Work Time Home
Gain
Hat
Homer
Qualify
Returned
Simpson
Tries
Visit
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If you put a frog in boiling water, it'll jump straight out. If you put it in cold water and gradually bring it to the boil, it'll sit right there until it dies. Scotland has been sitting in England's gradually boiling water for so long that many people are used to it.
John Niven /
Boiling
Cold
Dies
England
Long
Scotland
Used
Water
Been
Boil
Out
Bring
Many
Until
Frog
Gradually
Jump
Straight
Put
Right
Sit
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My family went to Toronto to visit relatives when I was 13 or 14. It was the first time we had ever been abroad. This was the early Eighties, and I remember the impossible glamour of air travel - my mum spending days trying to decide what she was going to wear on the plane.
John Niven /
Family
Travel
Air
Air Travel
First Time
Glamour
Impossible
Mum
Spending
Toronto
Time Family Travel
Days
Early
Eighties
Family Time Travel
Wear
Plane
Relatives
She
Visit
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I cannot, will never, understand these couples who hate each other, who conduct open warfare in front of their children - the kind of people who have to drop the kids off at the end of the driveway in case they lay eyes on one another. At the very least, civility must reign.
John Niven /
Civility
Driveway
Reign
Warfare
Conduct
Couples
Lay
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We live in a crazily youth-orientated world nowadays. It's a trickle-down thing. We see pictures of lithe, attractive celebrity couples such as Brad and Angelina or the Beckhams cavorting around, covered in tattoos, stomachs as flat as the singing in early 'X Factor' rounds.
John Niven /
Attractive
Brad
Covered
Rounds
Singing
World Live See
Tattoos
Couples
Factor
Nowadays
Pictures
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As a writer, that moment every few years when I buy a new laptop and find out that all the word processing stuff has slightly changed again (stuff I spend every working day using) is like getting into bed at night and finding some mad robot where you expected your wife to be.
John Niven /
Bed
Changed
Expected
Mad
Processing
Writer
Buy
Finding
Laptop
Robot
Slightly
Working Day
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You know that thing where you repeat a word over and over until it just sounds like utter gibberish? That's what doing a day of press on a film is like. Ten interviews in a row, all asking pretty much the same questions until you find yourself giving pretty much the same answers.
John Niven /
Answers
Asking
Giving
Interviews
Ten
Yourself Day Doing
Questions
Utter
Press
Repeat
Row
Sounds
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A novel, of course, is a fully self-contained work of art. You pick it up off the shelf, open it, and there it is - a whole universe waiting for you to enter. A screenplay is just a blueprint for making a movie. Until the movie is actually filmed, the script really means nothing.
John Niven /
Movie
Novel
Self Contained
Universe
Waiting
Blueprint
Open
Course
Enter
Fully
Pick
Screenplay
Shelf
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I love my children and care greatly for their future. If they decide they just want to loaf around for a bit between the ages of 16 and 25, that's perfectly fine by me. I did it, and I'm doing fine, thanks. Sometimes 'leaving kids to their own devices' is the best thing for them.
John Niven /
Devices
Leaving
Thanks
Love Best Future
Ages
Greatly
Loaf
Perfectly
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There are precedents for what happens when societies allow the divide between rich and poor to get so huge that it stops being funny and starts becoming a sick, blood-boiling joke. If you had a Tardis, you could go back to 1917 and ask the Russian royal family how it was all going.
John Niven /
Being Funny
Royal
Royal Family
Sick
Joke
Divide
Stops
Societies
Russian
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When I went into the computer shop to change my last laptop, the 19-year-old kid behind the counter looked at my six-year-old model and described it as 'vintage.' 'Vintage?' I wanted to scream. 'Son, I've got shirts older than you! I own underpants that have seen more of the world!'
John Niven /
Scream
Shirts
Vintage
Counter
Laptop
Shop
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The Confederate flag was the flag of the American South during the civil war. It was the flag of people who were fighting against their own government in an attempt to retain slavery. It was the flag of people who thought slavery was no problem, who thought slavery was a good thing.
John Niven /
Government
War
Civil War
Confederate
Fighting
No Problem
Problem
Slavery
South
Against
Attempt
Civil
Good Thing
Retain
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On one level, of course, the notion of judging films or books or music against each other is completely ridiculous. Who's to say '12 Years A Slave' is a better film than 'The Wolf of Wall Street'? Or that one album in a certain genre is better than another in a completely different genre?
John Niven /
Music
Certain
Different
Film
Genre
Judging
Notion
Slave
Wall
Years
Against
Album
Books
Course
Each
Films
Street
Wall Street
Wolf
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I can still remember my mum (a voracious, if not discriminating, reader - I have seen everything from the sublime to the ridiculous by her bed, from Ian Rankin and Elmore Leonard to Barbara Cartland and James Patterson) taking me to get my library card when I was four and not yet at school.
John Niven /
Barbara
Bed
Library
Mum
Reader
Remember
School
Sublime
Me Remember I Can
Me Remember School
Seen
Card
Discriminating
James
Voracious
Taking
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From everything I can read about Aussie spiders, it seems like all they really like doing is hiding in your house or garden or car until you 'accidentally' disturb them - probably by doing something crazy like putting on the shoe they are lurking in - and they can officially bite you to pieces.
John Niven /
Car
Garden
Hiding
House
Lurking
Seems
Spiders
Accidentally
Aussie
Bite
Doing
Read
Disturb
Officially
Putting
Shoe
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It's tough being a dictator, but I've always thought it must be tougher being a hanger-on to a dictator. The late nights spent listening to his crazed ranting, the weary rictus grin from smiling at bad jokes, the draining knowledge that one misjudged comment could land you on the chopping block.
John Niven /
Block
Chopping
Comment
Dictator
Draining
Late
Weary
Nights
Grin
Smiling
Tougher
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As anyone who follows me on Twitter will know, I'm fairly robust in my views on there. I get next to nothing in the way of trolling. Most women I know who regularly come close to expressing an opinion get trolled constantly. This is a men-on-women issue. Guys are pretty much doing it to the girls.
John Niven /
Robust
Views
Women Me Way
Fairly
Twitter
Expressing
Follows
Regularly
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It wasn't until my teenage years that a book really left a mark, and that was George Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four.' It was on the syllabus at school when I was about 16, and I went on to read more of his books. It was the height of the Cold War, so a lot of the messages really resonated at the time.
John Niven /
War
Book
Cold
Cold War
Height
Left
Mark
Messages
Nineteen
School
Teenage
Teenage Years
Time War Cold War
Read
George
Orwell
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The mechanic could lift up the bonnet of the car and show me four dwarves strapped to a pair of tandems and tell me that the motor was actually dwarf-powered and that one of the little fellows had to be replaced, and I'd just be numbly writing out a cheque and scribbling 'new dwarf - car' on the stub.
John Niven /
Car
Fellows
Mechanic
Motor
Replaced
Writing
Little
Actually
Car Me New
Show
Cheque
Could
Just Be
Lift
Pair
Scribbling
Strapped
Tell
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I was on the dole once. I loved it. It was only for a couple of years, when I was 20 or 21 and playing in a band. Back then, this was something young folk did - you got your rent paid, a little bit of money to live on, and you loafed around, wrote songs, rehearsed and dreamed of playing Wembley Stadium.
John Niven /
Band
Little Bit
Paid
Dole
Dreamed
Folk
Rehearsed
Stadium
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It's one of the hardest things in the world to sustain a monogamous relationship for many years. People out there who have been with their partners for 30 years or more - I salute you. But it's just as hard to admit something isn't working and then try to manage a civilised separation as best as you can.
John Niven /
Relationship
Civilised
Manage
Monogamous Relationship
Partners
Salute
Separation
Best World People
Admit
Monogamous
Sustain
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The last time I saw Dad alive, he was in the hospital. He was watching 'Hell Drivers,' a crummy B-movie about truckers, on TV and reading the 'Daily Record.' This seems scarcely believable, but I actually said, 'Dad, you've not got long to go - don't you think you should be imbibing the culture a bit more?'
John Niven /
Alive
Believable
Drivers
Hell
Last Time
Reading
Crummy
Daily
Hospital
Scarcely
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I love Twitter, and my little corner of it is heavily weighted in favour of women, many of them writers: Caitlin Moran, India Knight, Lauren Laverne, Grace Dent, Deborah Orr, Marina Hyde, Suzanne Moore. I look at that list of names and think, 'Here comes the fun - fun that knows its way around a dictionary.'
John Niven /
Dictionary
Favour
Fun
Grace
Hyde
Lauren
Twitter
Corner
Dent
Writers
Love Women Look
List
Moore
Weighted
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I love watching the Oscars and seeing everybody saying all that 'it's an honour just to be nominated' rubbish. Then you see their faces when the split screen comes up as the winner is announced - the losers are all smiling through gritted teeth and looking as if they just swallowed half a pound of soor plooms.
John Niven /
Faces
Half
Honour
Oscars
Rubbish
Seeing
Teeth
Winner
Announced
Losers
Nominated
Pound
Screen
Smiling
Split
Swallowed
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I remembered being young in the late '70s and early '80s and growing up at the height of the Cold War. I remembered how scared I was of nuclear weapons, how often I though about them and about the possibility of everything and everyone I knew vanishing in a second in temperatures hotter than the centre of the sun.
John Niven /
Centre
Cold
Cold War
Height
Hotter
Late
Nuclear
Nuclear Weapons
Possibility
Remembered
Scared
Sun
Vanishing
Weapons
Temperatures
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I spend a fair bit of time in Los Angeles, and there is much I love about the place - the weather, the food, the beaches and the golf. And a few things I don't. Like the way an enormous number of mentally ill people seem to be forced to live on the streets with little or nothing in the way of government assistance.
John Niven /
Assistance
Enormous
Golf
Ill
Los Angeles
Streets
Weather
Love Time Food
Mentally
Angeles
Beaches
Fair
Few Things
Forced
Los
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It strikes me as one of nature's greatest jokes that the types of food we all like to eat more than anything (especially in winter) are the very things that cause the most insane weight gain - mounds of fluffy mashed potato, hot, thickly buttered toast, huge, steaming bowls of pasta, great big... actually, I'll stop there.
John Niven /
Bowls
Fluffy
Hot
Huge
Insane
Jokes
Pasta
Strikes
Weight
Winter
Eat
Buttered
Cause
Gain
More Than Anything
Potato
Stop
Toast
Types
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I had left the music industry at the end of 2001, after 10 years, and had spent three years writing every single day - producing two unpublished novels, one abandoned novel, and three unproduced screenplays. The word 'no' and I were on more than nodding terms. The word 'no' and I were talking about going on holiday together.
John Niven /
Abandoned
Holiday
Industry
Left
Music Industry
Novel
Screenplays
Single
Talking
Three
Together
Writing
Every Single Day
Word
Producing
Terms
Single Day
Spent
Unpublished
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You'll never even catch me doing that 'soft atheist' thing of very softly singing along or just mouthing the words, looking down at a hymn sheet every few seconds to check the words. To state the obvious, as an atheist, the hymn sheet is no use to me. So I just stand there, looking straight ahead or up at the ceiling, and do nothing.
John Niven /
Obvious
Seconds
Catch
Ceiling
Check
Hymn
Sheet
Soft
Softly
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John Niven Quotes - Page 2

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