Screenwriters From England

"The railway hit Harrow on the Hill in 1880 and it’s been downhill ever since, culminating in one of those formless red brick shopping centres which artfully combines a complete lack of aesthetic quality with a total disregard for the utilitarian function for which it is built."

"Never tell a lie when you can bullshit your way through."

"By the failures of the world in which I move I have been accused in my time of possessing nearly all the anti-social qualities. It has been said that, both in my business and in my private lives, I have been consistently sly, treacherous, ruthless and rapacious, vindictive, devious, sadistic and generally vile. I could add to that list. But no one, no one, has yet suggested that I would like even condone a resort to violence by others, much less promote or organize the use of it myself."

"It had been a most unpleasant day. [...] We had been questioned and cross-questioned. [...] The police couldn't have been worse. The questioner was a suspicious and bloody-minded Frenchman who made it clear from the start that he regarded us as undesirables. [...] My passport was received with a mocking smile. The bastard wouldn't take our word for anything. We had to show our money and count it out before his eyes. Then the amounts were written in our passports. We were warned against attempting to find work, unless it was in a ship leaving Djibouti, or to engage in the drug traffic. We were told, finally, that if either of us was still in the territory seven days hence, he had better be able to swim."

"It is hard for a woman not to like very much an attractive, rich and intelligent older man who adores her and yet who does not lose his good sense and dignity by insisting that she adore him in return."

"Nicki, my wife, was off in Romania somewhere on a three-week tour with the rest of the troupe. She is an exotic dancer, and if anyone wants to know how it was that a man my age, still vigorous but admittedly a bit the worse for wear, came to have a Greek woman twenty years his junior for a wife, they must ask her. [...] A man is entitled to seek consolation, and an attractive woman is entitled to look for protection. I always handled her business affairs or her, and when she was in a good mood she called me "papa." I may add that Nicki worked because she liked to work, not because I made her do so. I took no commission. She was completely free to come and go as she pleased, and with whom she pleased. I asked no questions. I have regretted our enforced separation very deeply. I went through her things to see if there was anything I could sell."

"'Bitter?' He grinned. 'Why on earth should I feel bitter? We were barbarians. You will note that I say "we". I include myself. What would we in our ignorance have done with so much old bird-crap, so much phosphate. Nothing. Our exploitation by the Powers was the best thing that ever happened to us. Even the American bombing was good. Simple people enjoy loud bangs.'"

"In your profession you must have met lots of very rich self-made men, as rich as or even richer than Zander. They always tend to regard themselves as a little above the law, wouldn't you say?"

"The warning message arrived on Monday, the bomb itself on Wednesday. It became a busy week."

"[Ambler's novels are] the well into which everybody had dipped"

"[W]hat use is an honest lawyer when what you need is a dishonest one?"

"'May guests be permitted to know what fresh disaster now postpones our detailed examination of your criminal past?' 'Certainly. The house is on fire.'"

"He has a one-hundred-and-ten percent British accent. Only other guy I ever met with an accent like it is an Armenian with a Lebanese passport who works for Unesco and was educated at the English High School in Istanbul before going on to the Sorbonne."

"It is absolutely essential that you rid yourself of this absurd idea that I am a criminal or that I have criminal instincts. I am a lawyer who respects the law. Illegality is for the immature and the foolish. The wise man has no need of it."

"They say that the Devil still quotes the scriptures"

"You, a British non-com, one of those upper-crust limeys whose voices make them sound as if they're pederasts even when they're not, could never be suspect."

"It came down to this: if I hadn't been arrested by the Turkish police, I would have been arrested by the Greek police. I had no choice but to do what this man Harper told me. He was entirely responsible for what happened to me."

"In my experience, most people are extraordinarily careless about the way they look after traveler's checks. Just because their counter-signature is required before a check can be cashed, they assume that only they can negotiate it. Yet anyone with eyes in his head can copy the original signature. [...] People who leave traveler's checks lying around deserve to lose them."

"If I had not made the money, someone else would have done so. Not one of those unfortunate creatures would have been any better off and I should have lost money."

"I think that, to begin with, he had intended to kill Dimitrios when he found him, but as he began to get short of money his hatred of Dimitrios became more reasonable."

"Drug addicts, you know, are always very eager to get other people to take drugs too."

""Let us hope the bad times are ended for good," [said Mr. Tan.] "Good business for one is good business for all," said Girija. "Very true." Now, Mr. Tan decided, they were coming to the point. Reference to mutual advantage was the accepted preliminary to a squeeze."

"Greta is really a splendid cook and there is nothing Swiss about my wines."

"Latimer turned to watch the subject of these reflections carefully, almost lovingly, adjusting the coffee percolator, and thought how difficult it was to dislike a man when he was making coffee for you."

"I think that if I were asked to single out one specific group of men, one type, one category, as being the most suspicious, unbelieving, unreasonable , petty, inhuman, sadistic, double-crossing set of bastards in any language, I would say without any hesitation: "the people who run counter-espionage departments." With them, it is no use having just one story; and especially not a true story; they automatically disbelieve that. What you must have is a series of stories, so that when they knock the first one down you can bring out the second, and then when they scrub that out, come up with a third. That way they think they are making progress and keep their hands off you, while you gradually find out the story they really want you to tell."

"Power is for the powerful. Let power fall into the hands of the weak and the rest is tyranny."

"The important thing to know about an assassination or an attempted assassination is not who fired the shot, but who paid for the bullet."

"Hallett drew a deep breath. "Mr. Nilson," he said, "I wish you could tell me something. Why is it that when an apparently normal, intelligent, law-abiding citizen like you gets hold of a passport and a steamship ticket, he suddenly turns into a juvenile--" "Okay, Mr. Hallett," Greg broke in irritably. "You can't say anything I haven't already said to myself.""

"Desmond Leslie was born in London in 1921 and educated at Ampleforth, in Yorkshire, but, throughout his childhood and later, he spent idyllic summers and other periods at Castle Leslie (of which his elder brother, Jack, was the heir). After a couple of terms at Trinity College Dublin, and simultaneous tuition at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, where he reacted against “the constraint of orthodox harmony”, Desmond joined the RAF to fight as a Spitfire pilot during the second World War. His experiences at this time formed a basis for his first novel, Careless Lives. A sense of humour was one of Desmond Leslie’s assets, though it chimes a bit oddly with a few of his outre obsessions. He was, for example, a flying-saucers devotee, and co-wrote a book on the subject that became a best-seller in the early 1950s. He was also, in defiance of his Catholic upbringing, an adherent of an esoteric religious group called the White Eagle Lodge, founded in 1936 by a spiritualist"

"This power, I tell them, shall change the face of the Earth. No more shall small groups, nor even single men, be able to rule multitudes through hunger in their bellies; for there shall no more be hunger nor want nor cold; and in time again there shall be no more disease, for as man learns to live in harmony with nature, instead of continually struggling against it, he will destroy the cause of disease. (p. 206)"

"I see here some foolish ones fidgeting and wondering why the guards do not remove me from the floor. Save your energy, for the guards cannot touch me. Nor can you so much as rise from your seats to lay hands on me. Try it, if you do not believe me."

"For this we have lived; for this we have planned; for this have many died and suffered. You were told and you scoffed, that the meek shall inherit the Earth. But I say to you the day has come when the man of peace and brotherhood shall Inherit the kingdom he will build. But those who oppose it shall never again tread this long-suffering Earth. Those who wish to live shall live; but those who cannot live without destroying, shall themselves be destroyed, till the end of time. It is for you, and you alone, to make the choice. Think well, for the great heritage is yours."

"I ask... What would they do if every nation had unlimited electrical power-power for the taking-power costing nothing to obtain and available to all men equally?"

"Only minutes were required to impress these thoughts indelibly on their minds, for a thought is instantaneous and its grasping depends on its strength and clarity.(p. 211)"

"Now let us see what he can do with it. Let us see if, under easier conditions, he is able to build the planetary paradise he has always desired, or will abuse his new leisure to the destruction of his soul. Let us see if godly power will make him a little more godlike. (p. 201)"

"Out of nowhere I have appeared. They see me for the first time. No longer the image, but reality. They see and they hear me. I raise my arms, and the gasps and babble die down. I begin to speak the words we knew and decided long ago. Each hears me in his own tongue. (p.200)"

"Why should they risk a public landing? Their ship would be impounded for evasion of custom duties. Their clothes would be torn off and sold as souvenirs."

"How do you speak that all men may hear you in their own tongues? It is an art known and practiced by teachers of old."

"It seems that a lot of people have forgotten about George Adamski. In the 1950s he was one of the very first people to speak out about his contacts. He wrote a very famous book he coauthored with an Anglo-Irish gentleman, Desmond Leslie, called Flying Saucers Have Landed, which was published in 1953. It’s mainly a historical overview, a study by Desmond Leslie, of the flying saucer phenomena."

"I do not judge them, criticise nor take sides. I address them as representatives of the human race, nothing more. Then I project a picture of the world divided against itself into countless pockets of insanity, and with it the question why this should be so? Why should semi-rational beings behave worse than those with no reason at all- Why ?"

"Of all the contactees, Adamski attracted the most controversy and odium; and none but a man of his strength of character could have survived the onslaught."

"Perhaps you are wondering if I myself believe in flying saucers? Yes I do. I have thought it all out, and, from what I have learned from my husband, I think there is no doubt that they do exist... Until Desmond had had actual contact with the men from the other worlds I doubted their existence. But his letters are full of facts which have amazed and shaken me. What is more, I share my husband's belief that the present "cold war" conditions in the world may flare up at any time, and that the saucer men may be our only means of salvation."

"Coming into San Diego we saw a beautiful golden ship in the sunset, but brighter than the sunset. I had ten-power binoculars with me, and was able to study it for half a minute from the halted car. It slowly faded out, the way they do... We have been given their simple philosophy. It runs parallel with the original teachings of Jesus."

"Desmond Leslie, who has died aged 79, was a celebrated Irish eccentric and self-styled "discologist" best known for his book The Flying Saucers Have Landed (1953), which became a key text of the New Age movement. The prevailing scientific materialism of Leslie's time held no appeal to him, and he turned his attention instead to the world of mysteries. Attracted to ancient history, archaeology and esoteric philosophy, he saw in them evidence of a world view quite different from that of more soberly academic contemporaries. To Leslie, ancient monuments and artefacts were proof of a sophistication of culture and technology that could not be attributed to the people of their times. The makers, he concluded, were evidently super-human - or came from elsewhere... Leslie joined forces with another Anglo-Irish aristocrat, Brinsley le Poer Trench, who as the 8th Earl of Clancarty later promoted a debate on UFOs in the House of Lords. Together they founded Flying Saucer Review. Contributors included C G Jung, who published his own book on flying saucers in 1959.Thereafter, Leslie continued to preach the message of the space people. Their intentions, he was at pains to explain, were wholly peaceable."

"He did hate doing it. It was alien to his nature. He reluctantly let himself be drawn into this thing, thinking what he would have done would have been a very passionate politicised scream of emotion, and what he was being pushed into was this box he didn't feel at all comfortable in."

"He hated coming on the set and despised me because I wore white shoes."

"I remember years ago when [w:The Price of Coal|The Price of Coal]] was on television one evening [in either 1977 or 1978]. When I got on the bus in Chapeltown the next day it was full of miners coming off shift. I walked down the aisle and they just looked and said nothing. I'm scared to death until one man appointed himself spokesman and said ‘that were alreight, Barry’. I felt like an icon then, I can tell you!"

"I wanted him to use all his experience and intuition and empathy with people who'd grown up around him in Sheffield and put that into the movie, and I would be [...] the alien force, who was the voice of what science can do, and I would kind of foist these horrible indignities and horrors on these people, and he would try and get them to behave the way they would. So there was an innate conflict in that. We had many shouting matches, really passionate things, totally necessary for doing this."

"I think that I painted an accurate picture of what life was like for someone like Billy forty years ago. Looking back, maybe I was not as sympathetic as I could have been to some of the adult characters."

"How often are 'dreams realised' in real life? I write about real people and show a section of their life. Without the Hollywood endings which rarely happen outside Hollywood. My memory is failing me these days and I cannot remember the exact details, but Walt Disney offered to make Kes. On the condition that the hawk recovered. Should we have sold out? I know which way would always be right for me."