Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I couldn't imagine a list of 10 records that didn't contain a punk record - that didn't contain a Clash record.
Why are we scared of a '50s weepie? Why are we scared of a movie that pulls you in and punches you in the stomach?
I don't think you can call it stalking when it's just phone calls and letters and emails and knocking on the door.
She thought I was...soulful, by which I think she means that I don't say much and I always look vaguely pissed off.
Youth is a quality not unlike health: it's found in greater abundance among the young, but we all need access to it.
Barry, you're over thirty years old. You owe it to your mum and dad not to sing in a group called Sonic Death Monkey.
But then, that was the trouble with relationships generally. They had their own temperature and there was no thermostat.
I can't imagine writing a screenplay where I didn't feel deeply connected at some kind of visceral level to the material.
...I feel as though I made a face and the wind changed, and now I have to go through life grimacing in this horrible way.
There are many differences between a baby and an I-Pod. And one of the biggest is, no ones going to mug you for your baby.
We are never allowed to forget that some books are badly written; we should remember that sometimes they're badly read, too.
That’s why; he’s worried about how his life is turning out, and he’s lonely, and lonely people are the bitterest of them all
I'm simply pointing out that what happens to us isn't the whole story. That I continue to exist even when we're not together.
Complaining about boring football is a little like complaining about the sad ending of King Lear: it misses the point somehow.
Definitely avoid going out with ugly girls who say they want to be models. Not because they're ugly, but because they're mad".
I burst into tears and I cry and cry until it feels as though it is not salt and water being squeezed from my eyes, but blood.
I don't even feel as if I'm the center of my own world, so how am I supposed to feel as though I'm the center of anyone else's?
You'll remember someone who broke your heart, and you'll think to yourself, 'Oh yes, I remember how that feels.' But you can't.
Not for the first time in my life, and certainly not for the last, a self-righteous gloom had edged out all semblance of logic.
I love the detail about the workings of the human heart and mind that only fiction can provide - film can't get in close enough.
The Oscars are like a political campaign. You have to have the right candidates, and the people in Hollywood know what they are.
Every time people force themselves to carry on with a book they're not enjoying, they reinforce the idea that reading is a duty.
Sequels are very rarely a good idea, and in any case, the success of the book changed my relationship with the club in some ways.
I'm coming to London next week, by the way, in unhappy circumstances. Are we getting on fine as we are? Or would you like a drink?
You had to live in your own bubble. You couldn't force your way into someone else's, because then it wouldn't be a bubble any more.
It's a mystery of human chemistry and I don't understand it, some people, as far as their senses are concerned, just feel like home.
I can see that now. I can see everything once it’s already happened — I’m very good at the past. It’s the present I can’t understand.
Women who disapprove of men - and there's plenty to disapprove of - should remember how we started out, and how far we had to travel.
By the early seventies I had become an Englishman - that is to say, I hated England just as much as half my compatriots seemed to do.
You can't really ask for anything more than to be working for your entire life - and to be doing something that some people respond to.
Lots of times when I'm offered things, I can't see how a story gets filmed. Either it's too internal or it doesn't have a strong spine.
But I suspect that all writers come up with premises of some kind, fragments of narrative or scenarios, in the course of a working week.
I suddenly had a little epiphany: all the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal.
Football really felt like a private thing when I was in my teens because it wasn't on television, for a start, apart from 'Match of the Day.'
It's just that romance, with its dips and turns and glooms and highs, its swoops and swoons and blues, is a natural metaphor for music itself
To me, making a tape is like writing a letter – there's a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again, and I wanted it to be a good one.
Sometimes when people are attached to a project, they need persuading to stay attached, and then, in retrospect, they're not the right person.
We need a romantic illusion to embark on relationships in the first place. After that, they survive or fail for other, more practical reasons.
I couldn’t bear to think about the proper future, so I just tried to make things better for the next twenty minutes or so, over and over again.
The truth about life was that nothing ever ended until you died, and even then you just left a whole bunch of unresolved narratives behind you.
Hard is trying to rebuild yourself, piece by piece, with no instruction book, and no clue as to where all the important bits are supposed to go.
I don't want my books to exclude anyone, but if they have to, then I would rather they excluded the people who feel they are too smart for them!
We get together with people because they're the same or because they're different, and in the end we split with them for exactly the same reasons.
I lost the plot for a while then. And I lost the subplot, the script, the soundtrack, the intermission, my popcorn, the credits, and the exit sign.
Love, it turns out, is as undemocratic as money, so it accumulates around people who have plenty of it already: the sane, the healthy, the lovable.
I can't stand it when writers moan about what film-makers might do or have done to their books. There's a very simple answer: don't take the money.
There were about seventy-nine squillion people in the world, and if you were very lucky, you would end up being loved by fifteen or twenty of them.
I'm a reader for lots of reasons. On the whole, I tend to hang out with readers, and I'm scared they wouldn't want to hang out with me if I stopped.
It's no wonder we're all such a mess, is it? We're like Tom Hanks in Big. Little boys and girls trapped in adult bodies and forced to get on with it.
You can wait forever for the muse to sit on your shoulder, but most of the time you know what has to be done and inspiration is not going to help you.