Critics From The United Kingdom

"For now, I'm supposing that all movements are equal, which they're not, except in this respect: that none of them gives a damn about artists beyond their immediate utility. Good movements will use a writer just as ruthlessly as bad ones; since they all fancy they have better things to do than worry about one man's artistic survival."

"The rational man may talk a good game about suicide, but reason must give way to obsession and finally squalor before he can actually do it."

"The desire not to destroy the palace but to move into it oneself has always been the occupational curse of revolutionaries."

"Professor Bell, in his tortured efforts to sound fair and impersonal, arrives at an aesthetic principle too edifying for Art to bear. He says in effect that you can explore evil, drawing "on the tap roots of the demonic," but you may not approve it. But when you draw on those tap roots, who knows what you will find? Writers just back from their season in hell are likely to be covered in goat blood and tend to rave. The moralists can sort out the evidence later. But the writer with the correct attitude could not have entered hell in the first place."

"People talk about talent as though it were some neutral substance that can be applied to anything. But talent is narrow and only functions with a very few subjects, which it is up to the writer to find."

"When a reviewer says that Malamud is second only to Bellow, it means he really isn't thinking about either of them. When he's reading Malamud he's thinking about Bellow, and when he's reading Bellow he's thinking about Roth. This is the essence of the ratings game: distraction. Children play it all the time. "Is this the biggest bridge in the world?" "No, it's the third biggest." "Oh." They lose all interest in the bridge."

"A Horse, a Bucket and a Spoon."

"Saying "We will destroy terrorism" is about as meaningful as saying: "We shall annihilate mockery.""

"Why do I feel so exercised about what we think of the people of the Middle Ages?...I guess it's because so many of their voices are ringing vibrantly in my ears – Chaucer's, Boccaccio's, Henry Knighton's, Thomas Walsingham's, Froissart's, Jean Creton's... writers and contemporary historians of the period who seem to me just as individual, just as alive as we are today. We need to get to know these folk better in order to know who we are ourselves."

"The thing was, there's nothing funny about what Christ said. What's funny, really, is the fact that, you know, Christ said all these really good things about "Love thy neighbor" and everything, and for the next 2,000 years people are killing each other and torturing each other because they can't quite decide how he said it."

"It took 200 years for the Crusaders to create [this] Muslim fanaticism. It was the exact imitation of Christian intolerance."

"Ludicrous concepts…like the whole idea of a "war on terrorism". You can wage war against another country, or on a national group within your own country, but you can't wage war on an abstract noun. How do you know when you've won? When you've got it removed from the Oxford English Dictionary?"

"What is meant by: "We mustn't give in to the terrorists"? We gave in to them the moment the first bombs fell on Afghanistan."

"So no, I'm not in that camp, but I do think that statutory regulation is not required, and most of the heinous crimes that came up and have made such a splash in front of this Inquiry have already been illegal. Contempt of court is illegal. Phone tapping is illegal. Taking money from - policemen taking money is illegal. All of these things don't need a code. We already have laws for them. The fact that these laws were not rigorously enforced is, again, due to the behaviour of the police, the interaction of the police and News International, and - I mean, let's be honest about this - the fact that our politicians have been very, very involved, in ways that I think are not sensible, with senior News International people, and I hope you'll be calling the Prime Minister and Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to explain how that comes down from the top.""

"If this is justice, I am a banana."

"Boris Johnson, people always ask me the same question, they say, 'Is Boris a very very clever man pretending to be an idiot?' And I always say, 'No.'"

"The trouble about working on a tabloid is that they tend to be run by bullies."

"For fifty years Private Eye has pretty much in most issues exposed a miscarriage of justice, and a lot of them have been murders. Over the years, large numbers of these cases have been found to be entirely wrong, and the men convicted -- almost always men, there was a couple of women -- have been found innocent, so we would have killed those people, and in some of those very high profile cases which involved terrorism cases, we would have made very dangerous new martyrs by executing people who turned out not to have committed the murders involved. So on a purely practical basis, whatever you think it says about the civilised nature of your society or not, I think it would be incredibly dangerous to have capital punishment back."

"I do have a residual belief that, if at all possible, you should try not to mock the weak."

"In Britain we have a free press. It's not a pretty press, but it's free. The people who can't bear the Daily Mail, they say: 'you should ban it'. No no, no no, you don't ban it... you don't buy it.""

"Glory glory alleluia I'm the luckiest of females For I've danced with a man Who's danced with a girl Who's danced with the Prince of Wales."

"Not content with discoursing on supermen, the author presents them in the flesh - or whatever it is they are made of."

"A gentleman is a man who never hurts anybody else unintentionally."

"I would like a bat with the words WHAT A ROTTEN WICKET-KEEPER stamped in large letters on the back of it."

"A batsman given to run-stealing need not open his mouth to gain the reputation of a wit."

"Lionel Johnson was to be our critic, and above all our theologian, for he had been converted to Catholicism, and his orthdoxy, too learned to question, had accepted all that we did, and most of our plans. Historic Catholicism, with all its counsels and its dogmas, stirred his passion like the beauty of a mistress, and the unlearned parish priests who thought good literature or good criticism dangerous were in his eyes "all heretics.""

"Dowson and Johnson most I praise— To troop with those the world's forgot, And copy their proud steady gaze."

"For two hours he talked of Gallifet; Of Dowson; of the Rhymers' Club; Told me how Johnson (Lionel) died By falling from a high stool in a pub... But showed no trace of alcohol At the autopsy, privately performed— Tissue preserved—the pure mind Arose toward Newman as the whiskey warmed."

"Do what thou wilt, thou shalt not so, Dark Angel! triumph over me: Lonely, unto the Lone I go; Divine, to the Divinity."

"I fight thee, in the Holy Name! Yet, what thou dost, is what God saith: Tempter! should I escape thy flame, Thou wilt have helped my soul from Death:The second Death, that never dies, That cannot die, when time is dead: Live Death, wherein the lost soul cries, Eternally uncomforted."

"Thou art the whisper in the gloom, The hinting tone, the haunting laugh: Thou art the adorner of my tomb, The minstrel of mine epitaph."

"The ardour of red flame is thine, And thine the steely soul of ice: Thou poisonest the fair design Of nature, with unfair device.Apples of ashes, golden bright; Waters of bitterness, how sweet! O banquet of a foul delight, Prepared by thee, dark Paraclete!"

"Through thee, the gracious Muses turn, To Furies, O mine Enemy! And all the things of beauty burn With flames of evil ecstasy.Because of thee, the land of dreams Becomes a gathering place of fears: Until tormented slumber seems One vehemence of useless tears."

"Dark Angel, with thine aching lust To rid the world of penitence: Malicious Angel, who still dost My soul such subtile violence!"

"King, tried in fires of woe! Men hunger for thy grace: And through the night I go, Loving thy mournful face. Yet, when the city sleeps; When all the cries are still: The stars and heavenly deeps Work out a perfect will."

"Our wearier spirit faints, Vexed in the world‘s employ: His soul was of the saints; And art to him was joy."

"Vanquished in life, his death By beauty made amends: The passing of his breath Won his defeated ends."

"Which are more full of fate: The stars; or those sad eyes? Which are more still and great: Those brows; or the dark skies?"

"Alone he rides, alone, The fair and fatal king: Dark night is all his own, That strange and solemn thing."

"Now from the broken tower, what solemn bell still tolls, Mourning what piteous death? Answer, O saddened souls! Who mourn the death of beauty and the death of grace."

"Johnson's poetry, like Johnson himself before his last decay, conveys an emotion of joy, of intellectual clearness, of hard energy; he gave us of his triumph."

"Johnson was stern by nature, strong by intellect, and always, I think, deliberately picked his company."

"Even without stimulant his theology conceded nothing to human weakness, and I can remember his saying with energy, "I wish those people who deny the eternity of punishment could realise their unspeakable vulgarity.""

"He had the delicate strong features of a certain filleted head of a Greek athlete in the British Museum, an archaistic Graeco-Roman copy of a masterpiece of the fourth century, and that resemblance seemed symbolic of the austere nobility of his verse."

"Imageries of dreams reveal a gracious age: Black armour, falling lace, and altar lights at morn. The courtesy of saints, their gentleness and scorn, Lights on an earth more fair, than shone from Plato's page: The courtesy of knights, fair calm and sacred rage: The courtesy of love, sorrow for love's sake borne. Vanished, those high conceits! Desolate and forlorn, We hunger against hope for the lost heritage."

"What comes now? The earth awaits What fierce wonder from the skies? Thunder, trampling through the night? Morning, with illustrious eyes? Morning, from the springs of light: Thunder, round Heaven's opening gates.."

"The winds are sometimes sad to me, The starry spaces, full of fear; Mine is the sorrow on the sea, And mine the sigh of places drear. Some players upon plaintive strings Publish their wistfulness abroad; I have not spoken of these things, Save to one man, and unto God."

"Ill times may be; she hath no thought of time: She reigns beside the waters yet in pride. Rude voices cry: but in her ears the chime Of full, sad bells brings back her old springtide. Like to a queen in pride of place, she wears The splendour of a crown in Radcliffe's dome. Well fare she, well! As perfect beauty fares; And those high places, that are beauty's home."

"Go tell the Spartans, thou that passest by, That here, obedient to their laws, we lie."

"O harmony! thou tenderest nurse of pain, If that thy note's sweet magic e'er can heal Griefs which the patient spirit oft may feel, Oh! let me listen to thy songs again; Till memory her fairest tints shall bring; Hope wake with brighter eye, and listening seem With smiles to think on some delightful dream."