Quotes by British Authors - Page 652

Bob loses saving throw vs. shiny with a penalty of -5. Bob takes 2d8 damage to the credit card.
Charles Stross
If he were a man of strong mind, it only gave him fits; but a person of mere average intellect it usually sent mad.
Jerome K. Jerome
It is very strange, this domination of our intellect by our digestive organs. We cannot work, we cannot think, unless our stomach wills so. It dictates to us our emotions, our passions. After eggs and bacon it says, "Work!" After beefsteak and porter, it says, "Sleep!" After a cup of tea (two spoonfuls for each cup, and don't let it stand for more than three minutes), it says to the brain, "Now rise, and show your strength. Be eloquent, and deep, and tender; see, with a clear eye, into Nature, and into life: spread your white wings of quivering thought, and soar, a god-like spirit, over the whirling world beneath you, up through long lanes of flaming stars to the gates of eternity!
Jerome K. Jerome
Strange, isn't it,' mused Glokta as he watched him struggle for air. 'Big men, small men, thin men, fat men, clever men, stupid men, they all respond the same to a fist in the guts. One minute you think you're the most powerful man in the world. The next you can't even breathe by yourself.
Joe Abercrombie
Prime numbers are useful for writing codes and in America they are classed as Military Material and if you find one over 100 digits you have to tell the CIA and they buy it off you for $10,000. But it would not be a very good way of making a living.
Mark Haddon
Chater: You dare to call me that. I demand satisfaction!Septimus: Mrs Chater demanded satisfaction and now you are demanding satisfaction. I cannot spend my time day and night satisfying the demands of the Chater family.
Tom Stoppard
The thought of talking about it made Pueblo's gut ache, but then he thought of everything that Amy had been through – not that she'd told him her version yet. She had balls of steel, he thought with a smile. And what did he have? Three pairs of loin cloths going crisp on the radiator.
Dianna Hardy
It took Pueblo a few seconds to take in his surroundings. The first thing he realised was that he felt bruised all over; the second was that his clothes were waterlogged, even more than before, from the quicksand; and the third, was that he had landed on his front and was lying on a large, uncomfortable stone.No, wait… In his disoriented state, he shifted his weight. The stone didn't move. He was lying on his own fucking erection.
Dianna Hardy
The trouble with England, he thinks, is that it's so poor in gesture. We shall have to develop a hand signal for ‘Back off, our prince is fucking this man's daughter.’ He is surprised that the Italians have not done it. Though perhaps they have, and he just never caught on.
Hilary Mantel
Pretend to be mad and talk a lot. Then — and this is the important bit — do nothing at all until you absolutely have to and then make sure everyone dies.
Jasper Fforde
The big bad monster wasn't green and hiding under the bed, it wore tasteless floral prints, bright scarlet lipstick and sat in the kitchen smoking and saying 'bollocks' alot.
Jo Brand
Eating was easy. Thinking was hard.
Jeanette Winterson
If you were going to be successful in the world of crime, you needed a reputation for honesty.
Terry Pratchett
GUIL: It [Hamlet's madness] really boils down to symptoms. Pregnant replies, mystic allusions, mistaken identities, arguing his father is his mother, that sort of thing; intimations of suicide, forgoing of exercise, loss of mirth, hints of claustrophobia not to say delusions of imprisonment; invocations of camels, chameleons, capons, whales, weasels, hawks, handsaws -- riddles, quibbles and evasions; amnesia, paranoia, myopia; day-dreaming, hallucinations; stabbing his elders, abusing his parents, insulting his lover, and appearing hatless in public -- knock-kneed, droop-stockinged and sighing like a love-sick schoolboy, which at his age is coming on a bit strong.ROS: And talking to himself.GUIL: And talking to himself.
Tom Stoppard
Preserve me from such cordiality! It is like handling briar-roses and may-blossoms - bright enough to the eye, and outwardly soft to the touch, but you know there are thorns beneath, and every now and then you feel them too; and perhaps resent the injury by crushing them in till you have destroyed their power, though somewhat to the detriment of your own fingers.
Anne Brontë
Do you remember what we just did? Please tell me you remember what we just did."She briefly toyed with the idea of lying and saying no, just to see the look on his face, but she'd had enough of having her brain played with – it wouldn't be too sporting to do the same to him. "Yes, I remember, and don't you think for one minute that just because you had me on my back screaming I was 'yours'," she waved four fingers in quotation marks in front of his face, "that it gives you any kind of ownership over me, because it doesn't."He looked annoyed, then relieved, then he laughed. "Yeah, whatever, baby.
Dianna Hardy
Tell me you spotted a condom tree over to the right by the stream of lube.
Jane Davitt
Naboo: "You've read all the books, but when it comes to the crunch, where are you?"Saboo: "The crunch! How dare you speak to me of the crunch? You know nothing of the crunch. You've never even been to the crunch!"Naboo: "Been there once."Saboo: "Oh, a little day trip 'round the crunch, we can all go there as tourists. 'Ooh, that's a bit of crunch-'"Naboo: "Shut it!
Julian Barratt
So asking you to take a moonlit walk with me, that would totally not work?""What?" Again that glare. "Go away. Stop being an idiot. I don't even know you.""You're healing my little brother Bowie.""Yeah, that doesn't make us friends, kid.""So no moonlight.""Are you retarded?""Sunrise? I could get up early.""Go away.""Sunset tomorrow?" -Sanjit & Lana
Michael Grant
Mercer,” Polly says, “we are now going to hug. As a group. The experience will be very un-English. It will be good for you. Do not speak, at all, especially not in an attempt to diffuse the emotional intensity of the situation.”They hug, somewhat awkwardly, but with great feeling.“Well,” Mercer says, after a moment, “that was certainly—”“I will hit you with a shovel,” Polly Cradle murmurs.
Nick Harkaway
Stephen nodded. 'Tell me,' he said, in a low voice, some moments later. 'Were I under naval discipline, could that fellow have me whipped?'He nodded towards Mr Marshall. 'The master?' cried Jack, with inexpressible amazement. 'Yes,' said Stephen looking attentively at him, with his head slightly inclined to the left. 'But he is the master...' said Jack. If Stephen had called the sophies stem her stern, or her truck her keel, he would have understood the situation directly; but that Stephen should confuse the chain of command, the relative status of a captain and a master, of a commissioned officer and a warrant officer, so subverted the natural order, so undermined the sempiternal universe, that for a moment his mind could hardly encompass it. Yet Jack, though no great scholar, no judge of a hexameter, was tolerably quick, and after gasping no more than twice he said, 'My dear sir, I beleive you have been lead astray by the words master and master and commander- illogical terms, I must confess. The first is subordinate to the second. You must allow me to explain our naval ranks some time. But in any case you will never be flogged- no, no; you shall not be flogged,' he added, gazing with pure affection, and with something like awe, at so magnificent a prodigy, at an ignorance so very far beyond anything that even his wide-ranging mind had yet conceived.
Patrick O'Brian
You will be interested to hear, Hilary, that it [the drug] had a most remarkable effect — even on Selena after a very modest quantity. She cast off all conventional restraints and devoted herself without shame to the pleasure of the moment." I asked for particulars of this uncharacteristic conduct. "She took from her handbag a paperback edition of Pride and Prejudice and sat on the sofa reading it, declining all offers of conversation.
Sarah Caudwell
Mary, you know I hate parties. My idea of hell is a very large party in a cold room where everybody has to play hockey properly.
Stella Gibbons
Sometime later the islanders on a little rimward atoll were amazed to find, washed into their little local lagoon, the wave-rocked corpse of a hideous sea monster, all beaks, eyes and tentacles. They were further astonished at its size, since it was rather larger than their village. But their surprise was tiny compared to the huge, stricken expression on the face of the dead monster, which appeared to be have been trampled to death.
Terry Pratchett
Whew,' he said, 'I'm glad that's over, Thomas. I've been feeling awfully bad about it.' It was only too evident that he no longer did.
Graham Greene
Dad instantly set out his stall:he wanted a big dog, a 'man dog',a dog that if it was human would enjoy a pint and stare at the barmaid's arse
Alan Carr
The encapsulated bird your conspirators sent you to fetch. The sterilized male chicken with the Creator DNA sequences. The plot capon. Where is it?
Charles Stross
His jaw was set, telling me I should back off. Unfortunately, being a gobby cow meant I couldn’t.
Kyra Lennon
After Puckoon I swore I'd never write another book. This is it
Spike Milligan
He looked up at them, a scruffy Napoleon with his laces trailing, exiled to a rose-trellised Elba.
Terry Pratchett
Humour is meant, in a literal sense, to make game of man; that is, to dethrone him from his official dignity and hunt him like game.
G.K. Chesterton
You probably think that being a guest in your aunt's house I would hesitate to butter you all over the front lawn and dance on the fragments in hobnailed boots, but you are mistaken. It would be a genuine pleasure. By an odd coincidence I brought a pair of hobnailed boots with me!' So saying, and recognising a good exit line when he saw one, he strode out, and after an interval of tense meditation I followed him. (Spode to Wooster)
P.G. Wodehouse
Check-ups are, in my experience, a grave mistake; all they do is allow the quack of your choice to tell you that you have some sort of complaint that you were far happier not knowing about.
John Mortimer
This is not the way things are done in Boy’s Own Adventure books. I recall no mentions of homosexual gang-rape and cannibalism
Robert Rankin
Need to get to Ruislip by sparrow-fart though', said the squadron leader. 'Think you can do that? Can I come along for the ride?
Robert Rankin
...You haven't I suppose ever mixed with politicians at close quarters. They're awful...their stupidity is inhuman.
Robert Skidelsky
With him big Phil from Notting Hill an old "face" from the sixties a pin up gangster with a "mars bar" weal scraping his left cheek and of course two "wag" slags in tow trussed up like French Poodles with "Bratz babe" stares and Gucci Handbags
Saira Viola
On the Ning Nang NongWhere the Cows go Bong!And the Monkeys all say Boo!Theres a Nang Nong NingWhere the trees go Ping!And the tea pots Jibber Jabber JooOn the Nong Ning NangAll the Mice go Clang!And you just cant catch em when they do!So its Ning Nang Nong!Cows go Bong!Nong Nang Ning!Trees go Ping!Nong Ning Nang!The mice go Clang!What a noisy place to belong,Is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!
Spike Milligan
Recklessness is almost a man's revenge on his woman.
D.H. Lawrence
...the primary paradox that man is superior to all the things around him and yet is at their mercy.
G.K. Chesterton
The men who made the joke saw something deep which they could not express except by something silly and emphatic.
G.K. Chesterton
Every Englishman abroad, until it is proved to the contrary, likes to consider himself a traveller and not a tourist.
Evelyn Waugh
If asked which words one associated with the Sahara, only the most dedicated surrealist might be expected to offer "whale".
Eamonn Gearon
Are we making a bomb?" "This is a trust exercise, like in drama," she says. "Are we making a bomb as a trust exercise?
Joe Dunthorne
In fact the bare adjective "bad" hardly scratches the surface of the man's awesome incapacity.
John Biggins
You can get anywhere in Pakistan if you know people, even into jail.
Salman Rushdie
What's happened is somewhere, along the line, as a society, we confused the notion of 'home' with the possibility of 'an investment opportunity'. What kind of creature wants to live in an 'investment opportunity'? Only man.The fox has his den. The bee has his hive. The stoat, has, uh... his stoat-hole... but only man chooses to make his nest in an investment opportunity. Mmm, snuggled down in the lovely credit! All warm, in the mortgage payment, mmmmm...
Stewart Lee
My father was my greatest inspiration. He was a lunatic.
Spike Milligan
Bottled, was he?" Said Colonel Bantry, with an Englishman's sympathy for alcoholic excess. "Oh, well, can't judge a fellow by what he does when he's drunk? When I was at Cambridge, I remember I put a certain utensil - well - well, nevermind.
Agatha Christie
In a Pyongyang restaurant, don't ever ask for a doggie bag.
Christopher Hitchens
Political life is best treated with antibiotics.
Colin Tegerdine
For my last birthday, Dad bought me a pocket-sized Collins English Dictionary. It would only fit in a pocket that had been specially designed.
Joe Dunthorne
No Ghost of any common sense begins a conversation
Lewis Carroll
What the hell are you doing here? You weren't on the guest list. Hell, you people aren't on anybody's guest list. If you turned up at a funeral, the corpse would walk out on you.
Simon R. Green
[About Uluru] I'm suggesting nothing here, but I will say that if you were an intergalactic traveler who had broken down in our solar system, the obvious directions to rescuers would be: "Go to the third planet and fly around till you see the big red rock. You can't miss it." If ever on earth they dig up a 150,000-year-old rocket ship from the galaxy Zog, this is where it will be. I'm not saying I expect it to happen; not saying that at all. I'm just observing that if I were looking for an ancient starship this is where I would start digging.
Bill Bryson
Casting my own eye down Fifth Avenue as my belly swelled, I would register with incredulity: Every one of these people came from a woman's cunt.
Lionel Shriver
Cider was my drink because I liked the taste and it made me stupid.
Frank Skinner
Just think, she said to herself. I could be living on the Right Bank. I could be married to a senior clerk at the Treasury. I could be sitting with my feet up, embroidering a linen handkerchief with a rambling-rose design. Instead I'm on the rue des Cordeliers in pursuit of a baguette, with a three-inch blade for comfort.
Hilary Mantel
What the eye does not see, the stomach does not get upset over
Jerome K. Jerome
She was heavier than he expected - women always are.
Sylvia Townsend Warner