Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
As children everyone thinks their family is weird and they're upset by the weirdness of their own family.
Stop wanting wealth and fame and start wanting instead to do something well about which you are passionate
No adolescent ever wants to be understood, which is why they complain about being misunderstood all the time.
I like to think of myself at home in the armchair, writing, smoking and occasionally wandering down the shop.
I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance.
I was born Mary Patterson, but then I married and naturally took my husband's name, so now I'm Neil Patterson.
You don't need a Harvard MBA to know that the bedroom and the boardroom are just two sides of the same ballgame.
Philosophy is an odd thing. When we use the word in everyday speech, you know, you sometimes hear it hilariously.
You can't just say there is a god because the world is beautiful. You have to account for bone cancer in children
I've never had any illusions about being a lead actor in films, because lead actors have to be of a certain kind.
You should give up.' 'Why?' 'For one thing, you'll live longer.' 'Oh, you don't live longer. It just seems longer.
It's extremely unlucky to be superstitious, for no other reason than it is always unlucky to be colossally stupid.
I'm afraid I don't believe there is such a thing as blasphemy, just outrage from those insecure in their own faith.
The most important philosophy I think is that even if it isn't true you must absolutely assume there is no afterlife.
...the reality of intelligent British speech... uses blasphemus, coital and cloacal expletives as a matter of course.
Many people would no more think of entering journalism than the sewage business - which at least does us all some good.
Atheism is not just about not believing there is a God, but on the assumption that there is one, what kind of God is he?
All we have to do is listen. The Good Lord gave us two ears and only one mouth, my dear white-headed mother used to say.
When we understand every single secret of the universe, there will still be left the eternal mystery of the human heart.
...as absurd and dishonest as claiming that the trouble with computer games is that they stop people watching television.
There is simply no limit to the tyrannical snobbery that otherwise decent people can descend into when it comes to music.
You can't reason yourself back into cheerfulness any more than you can reason yourself into an extra six inches in height.
It's hard to be a friend to someone who's depressed, but it is one of the kindest, noblest, and best things you will ever do.
My first words, as I was being born [...] I looked up at my mother and said, 'that's the last time I'm going up one of those.
Just as it is the love of money that is the root of all evil, it is the belief in shamefulness that is the root of all misery.
Homosexuals are not interested in making other people homosexuals. Homophobes are interested in making other people homophobes.
You can never hope to recapture the first fine careless rapture as the poet put it, but it stays with you like a good acid trip.
Knowing what I now know I would never have done anything so fatuous; but then I never would have known what I know now had I not.
Money no longer has any meaning. Civilization is coming to an end. If not the destruction of the world, it's an endless stalemate.
I suppose that there is no point wasting time being lazy, though of course indolence in a divine way, actually has its advantages.
My secret is that I have never thought there is a secret to anything in life. Passion. Love. Drive. Work. Work. Work. Dull but true.
I suppose the thing that really interests me is what mankind did with the big, big, big discoveries that have created our modern age.
I think I'm most nervous about revealing how nervous I have always been. People think me calm, confident, poised. Inside I'm a jelly.
You don't sit down and write a wish list about the person you are going to fall violently in love with. It just doesn't work like that.
Glory never arrives through the front door. She sneaks in uninvited round the back or through an upstairs window while you are sleeping.
Coming out as gay was an easy enough matter for me, since I worked in a profession where being gay had a long history of being accepted.
There is not any way that you can just choose the nice bits and say that means there is a God and ignore the true fact of what nature is.
A real education takes place, not in the lecture hall or library, but in the rooms of friends, with earnest frolic and happy disputation.
Seriousness is no more a guarantee of truth, insight, authenticity or probity, than humour is a guarantee of superficiality and stupidity.
This is the point. One technology doesn't replace another, it complements. Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.
There are some things I don't like, about which I think, well, that's me. But coriander is a giant hoax perpetrated by a perverted society.
I'm afraid I was very much the traditionalist. I went down on one knee and dictated a proposal which my secretary faxed over straight away.
I gather a repulsive nobody writing in a paper no one of any decency would be seen dead with has written something loathesome and inhumane.
I'm absolute attacking my own instinct for politeness, but I think I admire artists who just speak out or who are strong, so it's very hard.
Mankind can live free in a society hemmed in by laws, but we have yet to find a historical example of mankind living free in lawless anarchy.
I went to Cambridge and thought I would stay there. I thought I would quietly grow tweed in a corner somewhere and become a Don or something.
Taste every fruit of every tree in the garden at least once. It is an insult to creation not to experience it fully. Temperance is wickedness.
The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese. That, in erotic terms, is the Catholic church, in a nutshell.
Simon Gray, I decided when I first witnessed this frog into prince transformation, did not have a drinking problem. He had a drinking solution.
The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane.