Quotes by British Authors - Page 119

We may have a perfectly adequate way of doing something, but that does not mean there cannot be a better way. So we set out to find an alternative way. This is the basis of any improvement that is not fault correction or problem solving.
Edward de Bono
Oh man sometimes I wake up feel like a cat runover.Are you familiar with the stoical aspects of hard drinking, of heavy drinking? Oh it's heavy. Oh it's hard. It isn't easy. Jesus, I never meant me any harm. All I wanted was a good time.
Martin Amis
Ale, man, Ale's the stuff to drink,for fellows whom it hurts to think.
A.E. Housman
I do not think consciously of children [when writing] … I do know that children read me more intelligently than adults do.
Alan Garner
There is only one secret to great writing and that's great writing.
Chloe Thurlow
I peer through the spectral, polluted, nicotine-sodden windows of my sock at these old lollopers in their kiddie gear. Go home, I say. Go home, lie down, and eat lots of potatoes. I had three handjobs yesterday. None was easy. Sometimes you really have to buckle down to it, as you do with all forms of exercise. It's simply a question of willpower. Anyone who's got the balls to stand there and tell me that a handjob isn't exercise just doesn't know what he's talking about. I almost had a heart-attack during number three. I take all kinds of other exercise too. I walk up and down the stairs. I climb into cabs and restaurant booths. I hike to the Butcher's Arms and the London Apprentice. I cough a lot. I throw up pretty frequently, which really takes it out of you. I sneeze, and hit the tub and the can. I get in and out of bed, often several times a day.
Martin Amis
Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable. Never drink when you are wretched without it, or you will be like the grey-faced gin-drinker in the slum; but drink when you would be happy without it, and you will be like the laughing peasant of Italy. Never drink because you need it, for this is rational drinking, and the way to death and hell. But drink because you do not need it, for this is irrational drinking, and the ancient health of the world.
G.K. Chesterton
But in the daytime it was all right. And when you'd had a drink you knew it was the best way to live in the world because anything might happen. I don't know how people live when they know exactly what's going to happen to them each day.
Jean Rhys
I tried that too, you know. After ... my family was murdered, and I was waiting for justice, I tried to hide inside a bottle. But some men, Tony, [..] are not small enough to fit into a bottle.
Aleksandr Voinov
He only drinks when he gets depressed,' said Carrot. 'Why does he get depressed?' 'Sometimes it's because he hasn't had a drink.
Terry Pratchett
I began drinking because the thought that I was drinking gave me a kind of identity: each time I poured myself a brandy in the deserted afternoon I could say to myself 'I am a woman who drinks.
Penelope Mortimer
It's impossible to be a good writer if you haven't lived badly. A past life of drinking heavily, fighting and whoring all help to ease those words onto the page.
Ken Scott
He wanted one drink, and understood precisely why he wasn't going to have one. One drink ended up arriving in a dozen glasses.
Terry Pratchett
The Brandy Diet is one of my personal favourites – you don’t lose any weight, but if you drink enough of the stuff then you neither care what you look like nor what people think of you. Also, if you’re very lucky, you can lose days.
Kensington Gore
One reason why I don't drink is because I wish to know when I am having a good time.
Nancy Astor the Viscountess Astor
Many people die of thirst but the Irish are born with one.
Spike Milligan
Besides, she was alone and those who drink alone, she decided, had no need of any impediments to the pure act of consumption.
Alan Goodare
A traditional Englishman drinks tea to the point where his blood has long-since been replaced with an infusion of Ceylon, Assam, and Darjeeling.
Fennel Hudson
... while we are familiar with the adverse effect of drink on an empty stomach, we are now witnessing the far worse effect of drink on an empty mind.
Roger Scruton
There are strings in the human heart which must never be sounded by another, and drinks that I make myself are those strings in mine.
Charles Dickens
I drank through the buzz of befuddlement into perfect clarity and out again into the blissful confusion of true intoxication.
John Mole
Holy fuck,' Corcoran said, leaning back against the wall. 'I am going home and drinking a whole bottle of Bacardi. Someone can pour the Coke into me after I pass out.
M.R. Carey
And there was this jerk named Dwayne who kept saying, 'Go on, have a beer. You know you want one. One little beer's not going to hurt ya. You haven't had a drink for three years. You can handle it.'" He looked at me again. "You know?"I nodded."Caught me when I was vulnerable. You know, when I was still breathing.
Bill Bryson
Quite possibly one of the most revealing passages about Shakespeare as a man comes from one of the roughest of the jottings made by gossip John Aubrey from his interview with William Beeston, son of the Christopher Beeston who had acted with Shakespeare's company. The partly cancelled note reads: 'the more to be admired, he was not a company keeper. [He] ... wouldn't be debauched, and if invited to, writ [i.e. wrote] he was in pain.' [Ch.24]
Ian Wilson
For he was drinking too much. Not uncontrollably nor offensively, but still he seldom seemed to have a glass out of his hand.
Rosamunde Pilcher
One reason I don't drink is that I want to know when I am having a good time.
Nancy Astor
Elliot Rawley was a drinker, Cy’s mother had been right. And he was a poor drinker. One that let the demons of the bottle into his head when he tipped it back, demons that went about unloosing all the trouble they could find stashed in the catacombs of his mind. Every tragic thing that had ever happened, every self-doubt, every delusion, freed itself from bondage and revisited him when he drank.
Sarah Hall
Those partial to drink were hiding faults and dishonesty. They were sloppy souls, even the ones with pleasant manners and fine noses.
Sarah Hall
Janx Spirit : Janx Spirit is a rather potent alcoholic beverage, and is used heavily in drinking games that are played in the hyperspace ports that serve the madranite mining belts in the star system of Orion Beta. The game is not unlike the Earth game called Indian Wrestling, and is played like this: Two contestants sit at either side of a table, with a glass in front of each of them. Between them would be placed a bottle of Janx Spirit — as immortalized in that ancient Orion mining song :“Oh don’t give me no more of that Old Janx SpiritNo, don’t you give me no more of that Old Janx SpiritFor my head will fly, my tongue will lie, my eyes will fry and I may dieWon’t you pour me one more of that sinful Old Janx Spirit”Each of the two contestants would then concentrate their will on the bottle and attempt to tip it and pour spirit into the glass of his opponent – who would then have to drink it. The bottle would then be refilled. The game would be played again. And again. Once you started to lose you would probably keep losing, because one of the effects of Janx spirit is to depress telepsychic power. As soon as a predetermined quantity had been consumed, the final loser would have to perform a forfeit, which was usually obscenely biological.
Douglas Adams
Structural linguistics is a bitterly divided and unhappy profession, and a large number of its practitioners spend many nights drowning their sorrows in Ouisghian Zodahs.
Douglas Adams
Let us have wine and woman, mirth and laughter,Sermons and soda water the day after.Man, being reasonable, must get drunk;The best of life is but intoxication:Glory, the grape, love, gold, in these are sunkThe hopes of all men, and of every nation;Without their sap, how branchless were the trunkOf life's strange tree, so fruitful on occasion:But to return--Get very drunk; and whenYou wake with head-ache, you shall see what then.
George Gordon Byron
Sensible people advise against drinking on an empty stomach, but to my mind it is the best sort of drinking.
Tom Hodgkinson
I've gotten more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.
Winston S. Churchill
It was my Uncle George who discovered alcohol was a food well in advance of modern medical thought.
P.G. Wodehouse
Always remember, that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.
Winston S. Churchill
I give you full credit for the discovery, I crawl, I grovel, my name is Watson, and you need not say what you were just going to say, because I admit it all.
Dorothy L. Sayers
A lady came up to me one day and said 'Sir! You are drunk', to which I replied 'I am drunk today madam, and tomorrow I shall be sober but you will still be ugly.
Winston S. Churchill
… you were so worried about legal and illegal that you never stopped to think about whether it was right or wrong.
Terry Pratchett
This was all horribly wrong. This was red wine with fish. This was a man wearing a dinner jacket and brown shoes. This was as wrong as things get.
Hugh Laurie
The wrong answer is the right answer to a different question.
Paul Sloane
When I look inside myself, I find I am to blame,For everything that I've done wrong,And said others were to blame.
Anthony T.Hincks
Art exists because reality is neither real nor significant.
J.G. Ballard
Sometimes it's better to show our vulnerability / pain / regrets so others don't think us impervious / unapproachable - be real / open
Jay Woodman
Acting is illusion, as much illusion as magic is, and not so much a matter of being real.
Laurence Olivier
Perhaps she was just looking for love in the wrong places. In all the safe places. What if love was not safe at all?
Mary Balogh
Well, I don’t want to be king, I want to be real.
John Lennon
Hope itself is always genuine. It's only what it's placed in that can prove to be false.
Karen Maitland
Or because they hope these walls of books will deaden the drumming of the demon in their ears
Louis MacNeice
I think there is no difference between love and infatuation. If it works out, we call it love; if it doesn’t, we shrug our shoulders and say it was infatuation. It’s a hindsight word.
Deborah Meyler
When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.
Margery Williams Bianco
Solitude is our greatest teacher
Mimi Novic
Slowly the lights of the torches in front of Merry flicked and went out, and he was walking in a darkness; and he thought: ‘This is a tunnel leading to a tomb; there we shall stay forever.’ But suddenly into his dream there fell a living voice. ‘Well, Merry! Thank goodness I have found you!’ He looked up and the mist before his eyes cleared a little. There was Pippin! They were face to face in a narrow lane, but for themselves it was empty. He rubbed his eyes. ‘Where is the king?’ He said. ‘And Eowyn?’ Then he stumbled and sat down on a doorstep and began to weep again. ‘They must have gone up into the Citadel,’ said Pippin. ‘I think you must have fallen asleep on your feet and taken the wrong turning. When we found out you were not with them, Gandalf sent me to look for you. Poor old Merry! How glad I am to see you again! But you are worn out, and I won’t bother you with any talk. But tell me, are you hurt, or wounded?’ ‘No,’ said Merry. ‘Well, no, I don’t think so. But I can’t use my right arm, Pippin, not since I stabbed him. And my sword burned away like a piece of wood.’ Pippin’s face was anxious. ‘Well, you had better come with me as quick as you can,’ he said. ‘I wish I could carry you. You aren’t fit to walk any further. They shouldn’t have let you walk at all; but you must forgive them. So many dreadful things have happened in the City, Merry, that one poor hobbit coming in from battle is easily overlooked.’ ‘It’s not always a misfortune being overlooked,’ said Merry. ‘I was overlooked just now by—no, no, I can’t speak of it. Help me, Pippin! It’s all going dark again, and my arm is so cold.’ ‘Lean on me, Merry lad!” said Pippin. ‘Come now. Foot by foot. It’s not far.’ ‘Are you going to bury me?’ said Merry. ‘No, indeed!’ said Pippin, trying to sound cheerful, though his heart was wrung with fear and pity. ‘No, we are going to the Houses of Healing.
J.R.R. Tolkien
When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home,Let him combat for that of his neighbours;Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome,And get knocked on the head for his labours.To do good to Mankind is the chivalrous plan,And is always as nobly requited;Then battle fro Freedom wherever you can,And, if not shot or hanged, you'll get knighted.
George Gordon Byron
And one battle looks much like another when you survey the corpses after.
William Napier
With a savage grin, he let out an inhuman roar of bloodlust and threw himself into an unholy orgy of blood, fangs, claws, and death.
Alan Kinross
Serpent-Breath was famous...Wasp-Sting, short and lethal.
Bernard Cornwell
If they saw men swarming up the wall, if they saw the axes chopping at our shields on the wall’s top, then they would join the battle. Men want to be on the winning side.
Bernard Cornwell
First gain the victory and then make the best use of it you can.
Horatio Nelson
Sometimes the only option is to raise the stakes, to throw yourself the other way, to force your opponent further down the path they've chosen, further than they might want to go.
Mark Lawrence
Only a fool goes to war in winter.
Jayne Castel