Quotes by British Authors - Page 6

Rumours are like sexually transmitted diseases, both are spread by whores.
Habeeb Akande
How do we stop them?” Edilio asked. He raised his head, and Sam saw the distress on his face. “How do you think we stop them? When your fifteenth birthday rolls around, the easy thing is to take the poof. You gotta fight to resist it. We know that. So how are we going to tell kids this isn’t real, this Orsay thing?”“We just tell them,” Astrid said.“But we don’t know if it’s real or not,” Edilio argued.Astrid shrugged. She stared at nothing and kept her features very still. “We tell them it’s all fake. Kids hate this place, but they don’t want to die.”“How do we tell them if we don’t know?” Edilio seemed genuinely puzzled.Howard laughed. “Deely-O, Deely-O, you are such a doof sometimes.” He put his feet down and leaned toward Edilio as if sharing a secret with him. “She means: We lie. Astrid means that we lie to everyone and tell them we do know for sure.”Edilio stared at Astrid like he was expecting her to deny it.“It’s for people’s own good,” Astrid said in a low voice, still looking at nothing.“You know what’s funny?” Howard said, grinning. “I was pretty sure we were coming to this meeting so Astrid could rank on Sam for not telling us the whole truth. And now, it turns out we’re really here so Astrid can talk us all into becoming liars.
Michael Grant
The paradox is that some of the most artistically valuable contemporary photographs are content with being photographs, are not under the same compulsion to pass themselves off - or pimp themselves out - as art. The simple truth is that the best exponents of the art of contemporary photography continue to produce work that fits broadly within the tradition of what Evans termed 'documentary style'.
Geoff Dyer
As a radiation researcher, I am at one with being perceived as crazy!
Steven Magee
In Egypt, like everywhere, the land is made to fit the sky; but here it is more so. Here it is possible to say, “This is land," and point, and “This is sky," and point, but the eyes can’t discover the dividing line.
Helen Oyeyemi
Breath (from the book Blue Bridge)Whispering to myselftWith every step I take,Trying out names, for I knowtThere is something yet to be called …..I know it, something up aheadtJust around the bendOr over the rise –tA bird taking to the skyFrom the edge of a jagged cliff – A bird floating outwardsIn silence ……. A silencetWaiting for a footstepTo crunch on stones,tFor a voice to fling upwardThrough sharp sunlighttWith a name…… callingBefore the bird could calltBefore the bird called.Oh the bird was there alrighttAnd sure it took flightWhen it heard me approachtBut it broke my heartWith a mighty croak!So I’m sitting here playingtWith a purple flowerSlender stem, no leavestPurple fizz –And it’s quiet again.tI am stillI am nothingtAnd the hillIs a long, long slopetDown, down, down to the seaFar below.I could rolltI could runI could screamtBut I am nothing.A cool wind blowstAnd the light is naked and namelessAnd the rocks are faces of angelstAnd the bird in the sky wheelsAnd cries to forget the earthtAnd its ancient bones –Oh, sensual pain –tWings…. Wings…. Wings,Singing wings.If only I could begin To describe the emptinessWhich fills me to the brimtWith new breathI might almost lose my nametAnd take instead a feather for my soul.
Jay Woodman
Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.
Terry Pratchett
...which is where I met my my husband. Not currently my husband. My ex. Though he wasn't that then. I never know how to say that.""Allow my copydesk expertise to intervene: your then-pre-husband, later-to-be-post-husband in his prior-to-ex-husband status.
Tom Rachman
Aren't you going a little overboard?" I asked, picturing a day ahead of me trying to find these items in a town I didn't know."Nonsense, darling. What's the point of a party if you don't go overboard."I sat on the sofa watching her, admiring her. Not only was she beautiful, but she had a wonderful way of shaking off life's little problems, like water off a duck's back. Nothing seemed to upset her.
Rhys Bowen
Basically, when it comes to women, both aging and eating are somehow shameful.
Emma Woolf
A suicide is tragic because nothing interrupted it.
Emma Woolf
There is no one way to recover and heal from any trauma. Each survivor chooses their own path or stumbles across it.
Laurie Matthew
running a business without marketing will kill it
Paul Cookson
great web design without functionality is like a sports car with no engine.
Paul Cookson
The greatest gift a parent can leave a child is that parent's own independence.
Rosamunde Pilcher
Kurdistan has a long and turbulent history. Today, it faces a future branching in directions that could lead it towards success or disaster, freedom or renewed oppression.
Davan Yahya Khalil
The plane banked, and he pressed his face against the cold window. The ocean tilted up to meet him, its dark surface studded with points of light that looked like constellations, fallen stars. The tourist sitting next to him asked him what they were. Nathan explained that the bright lights marked the boundaries of the ocean cemeteries. The lights that were fainter were memory buoys. They were the equivalent of tombstones on land: they marked the actual graves. While he was talking he noticed scratch-marks on the water, hundreds of white gashes, and suddenly the captain's voice, crackling over the intercom, interrupted him. The ships they could see on the right side of the aircraft were returning from a rehearsal for the service of remembrance that was held on the ocean every year. Towards the end of the week, in case they hadn't realised, a unique festival was due to take place in Moon Beach. It was known as the Day of the Dead......When he was young, it had been one of the days he most looked forward to. Yvonne would come and stay, and she'd always bring a fish with her, a huge fish freshly caught on the ocean, and she'd gut it on the kitchen table. Fish should be eaten, she'd said, because fish were the guardians of the soul, and she was so powerful in her belief that nobody dared to disagree. He remembered how the fish lay gaping on its bed of newspaper, the flesh dark-red and subtly ribbed where it was split in half, and Yvonne with her sleeves rolled back and her wrists dipped in blood that smelt of tin.It was a day that abounded in peculiar traditions. Pass any candy store in the city and there'd be marzipan skulls and sugar fish and little white chocolate bones for 5 cents each. Pass any bakery and you'd see cakes slathered in blue icing, cakes sprinkled with sea-salt.If you made a Day of the Dead cake at home you always hid a coin in it, and the person who found it was supposed to live forever. Once, when she was four, Georgia had swallowed the coin and almost choked. It was still one of her favourite stories about herself. In the afternoon, there'd be costume parties. You dressed up as Lazarus or Frankenstein, or you went as one of your dead relations. Or, if you couldn't think of anything else, you just wore something blue because that was the colour you went when you were buried at the bottom of the ocean. And everywhere there were bowls of candy and slices of special home-made Day of the Dead cake. Nobody's mother ever got it right. You always had to spit it out and shove it down the back of some chair. Later, when it grew dark, a fleet of ships would set sail for the ocean cemeteries, and the remembrance service would be held. Lying awake in his room, he'd imagine the boats rocking the the priest's voice pushed and pulled by the wind. And then, later still, after the boats had gone, the dead would rise from the ocean bed and walk on the water. They gathered the flowers that had been left as offerings, they blew the floating candles out. Smoke that smelt of churches poured from the wicks, drifted over the slowly heaving ocean, hid their feet. It was a night of strange occurrences. It was the night that everyone was Jesus......Thousands drove in for the celebrations. All Friday night the streets would be packed with people dressed head to toe in blue. Sometimes they painted their hands and faces too. Sometimes they dyed their hair. That was what you did in Moon Beach. Turned blue once a year. And then, sooner or later, you turned blue forever.
Rupert Thomson
The children had had an argument once about whether there was more grass in the world or more sand, and Roger said that of course there must be more sand because of under the sea; in every ocean all over the world there would be sand, if you looked deep down. But there could be grass too, argued Deborah, a waving grass, a grass that nobody had ever seen, and the colour of that ocean grass would be darker than any grass on the surface of the world, in fields or prairies or people's gardens in America. It would be taller than tress and it would move like corn in the wind. ("The Pool
Daphne du Maurier
It was surely one thing to respect the Dark Arts as a dangerous enemy, another to speak of them with a loving caress in his voice?
J.K. Rowling
Most people today couldn't tell a bombardier from a brigadier" - said during a lecture in aid of the Army Benevolent Fund in 2009
Richard Holmes
Mounting tensions in Eastern Europe send shivers down the spine. Barely a quarter of a century after the end of the Cold War we seem to be sliding inexorably towards another.
Alex Morritt
Very few USA citizens realize that the USA corporate military is regarded by many to be both a domestic and international terrorist organization.
Steven Magee
Much, much later. when I am back home and being treated for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). I will be enabled to see what was going on in my mind immediately after 11 August.I am still capable of operating mechanically as a soldier in these following days. But operating mechanically as a soldier is now all I am capable of.Martin says he is worried about me. He says I have the thousand-yard stare'.Of course, I cannot see this stare. But by now we both have more than an idea what it means.So, among all the soldiers here, this is nothing to be ashamed of. But as it really does just go with the territory we find ourselves in. it is just as equally not a badge of h
Jake Wood
I fought to stay awake and keep the car on the road. And I thought back to texts I had read from the British Army in India, during the Raj, at the height of their empire. Young subalterns trapped in junior ranks had their own mess. They would dine together in splendid dress uniforms and talk about their chances of promotion. But they had none, unless a superior officer died. Dead men's shoes was the rule. So they would raise their crystal glasses of fine French wine and toast "bloody wars and dread diseases" because a casualty further up the chain of command was their only way to get ahead. Brutal, but that's how it's always been, in the military.
Lee Child
Facebook has been spreading across the continents faster than a highly contagious Asian bird flu!
Gemini Adams
I think our natural disposition as humans is to plod along until we get old and stop. But with social media, we've created a stage for constant artificial high drama.
Jon Ronson
This is why i hate social media. It gives a voice to people who dont (sic) deserve one.
Gary Streeter
We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds.
Alain de Botton
It's shame that gets us killed. Shame is the anchor, the heaviest burden to carry from the battlefield. Fortunately shame was an affliction I'd never suffered from.
Mark Lawrence
Grey hoped the Church would yet be able to save England from the fate of Tyre or Carthage, the great trading nations
Thomas Hughes
Bread is a second cause; the LORD Himself is the first source of our sustenance. He can work without the second cause as well as with it; and we must not tie Him down to one mode of operation. Let us not be too eager after the visible, but let us look to the invisible God.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
For a Man cannot believe a Miracle without relying upon Sense, nor Transubstantiation without renouncing it. So that never were any two things so ill coupled together as the Doctrine of Christianity and that of Transubstantiation, because they draw several ways, and are ready to strangle one another: For the main Evidence of the Christian Doctrine, which is Miracles, is resolved into the certainty of Sense, but this Evidence is clear and point blank against Transubstantiation.
John Tillotson
Miracles are like murders. After the first one, each becomes easier than the last for, with each success, the miracle-worker's certainty in himself becomes stronger.
Karen Maitland
I didn't just wake up one morning and think, "I'm a boy!" It sort of crept up on me and tapped me on the shoulder a few times before I started to pay attention I began to think that the word "girl" didn't quite fit me. It was like a shoe that was too small -- it pinched me.
Cat Clarke
Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.
Lewis Carroll
It's Halloween,The night we all play,Trick or treat,We won't go away.Be we ghoul or goblin, ghost,We'll knock on your door,To see who scares you the most.But cringe not in fear,Or cry out in pain,Cause it's only a game,Oh, what a shame.But don't despair,In the cold night air,Because we'll be back,And then you'll be scared!But not just one,Or even two.And so we bid you,A sweet adieu.
Anthony T.Hincks
I do not know where the error lies. I do not pretend to set people right, but I do see that they are often wrong.
Jane Austen
We are all 'right' if we are being truly ourselves.... that is the best we can be in each moment, until we learn more...
Jay Woodman
Waddya want me to do? through my sling shot at him?
Shirley Hughes
To me everything in business boils down to this: do you genuinely care about your customers - or just their cash?
Rasheed Ogunlaru
What is sometimes thought to be clever is, significantly often, merely an advanced form of foolishness.
Idries Shah
As usual, small towns like this were full of those who needed entertainment and whilst money was difficult to earn, the philosophy of giving the people what they wanted, which Franco lived by, had paid dividends.
Christopher Byford
Note to self," Joel commented. "When you go into Arious it's a 'no touchee, no zappee' situation! Paelen tapped Emily. "I suggest we try it again, just so I can see Joel's face when he gets zapped!" "Let's not, but say we did," Emily said.
Kate O'Hearn
But if you write a version of Ragnarok in the twenty-first century, it is haunted by the imagining of a different end of things. We are a species of animal which is bringing about the end of the world we were born into. Not out of evil or malice, or not mainly, but because of a lopsided mixture of extraordinary cleverness, extraordinary greed, extraordinary proliferation of our own kind, and a biologically built-in short-sightedness.
A.S. Byatt
The weather gods are toying with us." - Dr. James Stagg
David Haig
You're gorgeous, you old hag, and if I could give you just one gift ever for the rest of your life it would be this. Confidence. It would be the girl of confidence. Either that or a scented candle.
David Nicholls
'You must've been waiting for someone like me to come along,' I said. I meant, because of the big bed. But Larry looked at me all funny and said, 'Yes, I think I was.'
J.L. Merrow
Dorothy scratched her dark head, yawning wide, and white feathers floated out of her hair.
Laurie Lee
She is probably slightly too old to pout, but they've been going out a short enough time for it still to be cute.
Jojo Moyes
No," Lana said, "I'm not going to heal your scratch.""Good," Sanjit said."Good? Why good?""Because when you hold my hand, I don't want it to be work for you.
Michael Grant
There are certain natures of which the mutual influence is such, that the more they say, the more they have to say. For these out of association grows adhesion, and out of adhesion, amalgamation.
Charlotte Brontë
I guarantee it will change your life, but only because everything does, however small.
Johnny Rich
Susan stared at him.The blue glow in Death’s eyes gradually faded, and as the light died it sucked at her gaze so that it was dragged into the eye sockets and into the darkness beyond……which went on and on, for ever. There was no word for it. Even eternity was a human idea. Giving it a name gave it a length; admittedly, a very long one. But this darkness was what was left when eternity had given up. It was where Death lived. Alone.
Terry Pratchett
Truly Time is a vast Denful of Horrour, round about which a Serpent winds and in the winding bites itself by the Tail. Now, now is the Hour, every Hour, every part of an Hour, every Moment, which in its end does begin again and never ceases to end: a beginning continuing, always ending.
Peter Ackroyd
As a Christian, your godly life and your godly mothering sends its shimmering wake throughout all eternity.
Elizabeth George
You see," the tourist went on, "you know that thing you do with seaweed?"Bethan, brought up on the Vortex Plains, had only heard of the sea in stories, and had decided she didn't like it. She looked blank. "Eat it?" "No, what you do is, you hang it up outside your door, and it tells you if it's going to rain." Another thing Bethan had learned was that there was no real point in trying to understand anything Twoflower said, and that all anyone could do was run alongside the conversation and hope to jump on it as it turned a corner."I see," she said. "Rincewind is like that, you see." "Like seaweed." "Yes. If there was anything at all to be frightened about, he'd be frightened. But he's not. The star is just about the only thing I've ever seen him not frightened of. If he's not worried, then take it from me, there's nothing to be worried about." "It's not going to rain?" said Bethan. "Well, no, metaphorically speaking." "Oh." Bethan decided not to ask what "metaphorically" meant, in case it had something to do with seaweed.
Terry Pratchett
Walls have ears.Doors have eyes.Trees have voices.Beasts tell lies.Beware the rain.Beware the snow.Beware the manYou think you know.-Songs of Sapphique
Catherine Fisher
The happiness of being envied is glamour.Being envied is a solitary form of reassurance. It depends precisely upon not sharing your experience with those who envy you. You are observed with interest but you do not observe with interest - if you do, you will become less enviable. In this respect the envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power. The power of the glamorous resides in their supposed happiness: the power of the bureaucrat in his supposed authority.
John Berger
Normally, all I'm interested in is what the person has created. Hopefully they're not a mass murderer or mass rapist, but their personality is not important to me at that stage. They've got to be pretty extraordinary to make things like that anyway.
Isabella Blow
Why Dont You?' wasn't totally absurd to me," Diana said later. "Of course, the columns had a certain absurdity that tickled people -- just to think that anyone would thin of writing anything so absurd. But it wasn't even writing. To me writing--Edith Wharton, Henry James...Proust, for God's sake...is a think of beauty and sustainment. 'Why Don't You?' was a think of fashion and fantasy, on the wing...It wasn't writing, it was just ideas. It was me, insistent on people using their imaginations, insisting on a certain idea of luxury.
Amanda Mackenzie Stuart