Journalists From England

"Orelli smiled to himself. It was a wickedly introspective smile as if he looked into his own soul and was pleased with the evil he found there."

"“Is that what you are? An android?” “You could find out if you made love to me.” Faustaff smiled and shook his head. “Sweetheart, you’re just not my type.” “I thought any young woman was your type, doctor.” “So did I till I met you.”"

"Everything dies eventually—but that shouldn’t stop us enjoying life while it is there to be enjoyed."

"I have never had trouble with conflicting interpretations of my work. Once the story is published, it belongs to the reader."

"“An ethic is simply a system of survival,” Velusi said. “What does an ethic mean when there is no chance of survival?”"

"Fear was back and with it the old terrors, the old mental aberrations, the old superstitions, the old religions. He knew the pattern. He had studied it in the text books. He knew how little power rational argument had when faced with minds turned sick by fear. He knew how quickly a cult of the kind he had seen could proliferate and dominate a society and then split internally and become several warring sects."

"Seven women told The New York Times that Mr. Cohen had groped them or made other unwanted sexual advances over nearly two decades. Four insisted on anonymity, fearing professional repercussions. In each case, The [New York] Times reviewed documents or otherwise corroborated their accounts."

"Mr. Cohen's reputation was widely known in the newsroom, according to 10 former colleagues, both male and female. One former colleague said she and other female journalists had used a different entrance to a pub to avoid being groped by him. Another woman said she had avoided the bar downstairs from the newsroom after Mr. Cohen grabbed her knee during work drinks."

"Informed that seven women had come forward with sexual misconduct complaints, Mr. Cohen exclaimed, "Oh, God." "I assume it's stuff I was doing when I was drunk," said Mr. Cohen, a recovering alcoholic."

"Roy Hattersley...returned to the smoke of battle in Westminster where he at once began to work actively for Callaghan. He called in Roy Jenkins's room to tell him ... Roy Hattersley told him why. His growing lack of sympathy with Jenkins's political position was reinforced by Jenkins's recent television broadcast saying that more than 60 per cent of national income devoted to public expenditure would lead to tyranny – quite the opposite of what Tawney and Crosland had written and Hattersley himself believed. Hattersley was supporting Callaghan for fear of ‘splitting the vote’ and letting Foot in."

"Diversity was the encouragement of people to live together in harmony despite their differences and rejoice in the differences rather than deplore them."

"Until Roy Hattersley said he would shoot himself if I became prime minister, I had not been able to see any possible advantage in standing."

"Former lefties can make a good living in the media by attacking their ex-comrades – I'd do it myself if the price was right."

"[Proposals for multiple Las Vegas-style "super casinos" in the UK were under discussion at the time] Yet, to date, it is far from clear if the casino will give money to Blackpool or Blackpool give money to the casino. ... It [Blackpool council] is promising to compulsorily purchase the land for the casino, which is currently occupied by the police station and law courts. In a sign of the times, the council will agree to demolish public buildings that once embodied law and order to clear the ground for a gambling den and then spend public money on new homes for the police and judges. It gets better. The council already has spent public money on designing the new casino and finding a developer to put it up."

"The reason why Blackpool has to pay out gets to the heart of the delusion behind New Labour's thinking. It's not the scale of the poverty that puts the casino operators off the town, but that Blackpool's poverty is not great enough. ... Blackpool, like most seaside towns, is too far from the big centres of population to provide enough poor, addicted, desperate or foolish gamblers to allow the casinos to operate seven days a week, 52 weeks a year."

"In an unintentionally revealing moment, Brand describes attending a trade union march against austerity. He complains that the protesters are not like Islamic State terrorists but "flaccid" and placid. He has a case. For all its many faults, the British left does not imitate Isis. It does not commit genocide and practise sexual slavery. Its "revolution", when and if it comes, will consist of boring, gradual attempts to restrain an economic system that is running amok. Russell Brand will want no part of its tedious reforms and will go off in search of bigger thrills. The sooner he leaves the better."

"Morality and expediency coincide more than the cynics allow."

"Not only was it wrong for us to deal superficially with what Europe involved but we've paid the price ever since, because every time there's a crisis in Europe, people say with some justification, "Well, we wouldn't have been part of this if we'd really known the implications." Joining the European Community did involve significant loss of sovereignty but by telling the British people that was not involved I think the rest of the argument was prejudiced for the next thirty years."

"In politics, being ridiculous is more damaging than being extreme."

"The proposition that Muslims are welcome in Britain if, and only if, they stop behaving like Muslims is a doctrine which is incompatible with the principles that guide a free society."

"In my opinion, any man who can afford to buy a newspaper should not be allowed to own one."

"I don't want 'constructive criticism'. I want praise."

"Politics, as I never tire of saying, is for social and emotional misfits, handicapped folk, those with a grudge. The purpose of politics is to help them overcome these feelings of inferiority and compensate for their personal inadequacies in the pursuit of power."

"Of the two crises facing us this Christmas — the caviare crisis and the Gulf crisis — I must admit finding the caviare crisis the more immediate. Many people — including children — are actually having to do without any caviare at all this Christmas."

"He wrote to no agenda or party line. He did not believe it was the job of journalists to run the country or to advise politicians, but to nip at the heels of sacred cows and expose the inadequacy of the emperor's new clothes. He never pontificated about family values but he lived them, deeply. And however cruelly he wrote on occasions, he was unfailingly kind in real life. He believed that it was our duty to be happy as long as possible because tomorrow we die."

"With allies in the class struggle like Auberon Waugh the middle class has no need of enemies. Last night ATV transmitted the third and last programme in his series This is Waugh, in which he pleads for his right to go on living in the large and comfortable country house his father left him in Somerset, while the workers go on doing their own thing somewhere as far away as possible."

"It has been heartbreaking to see a legitimate and important cause—the survival of the middle class ethic—defended three weeks running by a procession of utterly unsympathetic nutters."

"What's hit's history: what's missed's mystery."

"Houses, are but badly built boats so firmly aground that you cannot think of moving them. They are definitely inferior things, belonging to the vegetable not the animal world, rooted and stationary, incapable of gay transition. I admit, doubtfully, as exceptions, snail-shells and caravans. The desire to build a house is the tired wish of a man content thenceforward with a single anchorage. The desire to build a boat is the desire of youth, unwilling yet to accept the idea of a final resting-place."

"Dorothea blew out her candle and settled down in the middle of the big spare room bed. An owl called in the woods. 'Not a barn owl, but a tawny,' thought Dick, listening to the sharp 'Gewick! Gewick!' as he fell asleep. A smell of new-mown hay drifted from the meadows on the further side of the river. 'There isn't a lovelier place in all the world,' thought Dorothea. London last night, and now Beckfoot. The summer holidays had begun."

"She's got a rum job, but she knows how to do it, and to have a job and know how to do it is one of the best things in this life. And if only she stops hankering after Cambridge..."

"A lot of things were lucky," said Daddy, and suddenly, while they were walking along, brought his hand down on John's shoulder and gave it a bit of a squeeze. "You'll be a seaman yet, my son." And John, for one dreadful moment, felt that something was going wrong with his eyes. A sort of wetness, and hotness... Partly salt... Pleased though he was, he found himself biting his lower lip pretty hard, and looking the other way."

"Grab a chance and you won't be sorry for a might-have-been."

"A pigeon a day keeps the natives away"

"Softly, at first, as if it hardly meant it, the snow began to fall."

"Only, the beastly Arctic won't freeze,"

"When a thing's done, it's done, and if it's not done right, do it differently next time."

"They found, like many explorers before them, that somehow, in their absence, they had got into trouble at home."

"BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS IF NOT DUFFERS WONT DROWN."

"Never say ‘no’ to adventures. Always say ‘yes’, otherwise you’ll lead a very dull life."

"I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."

"...He's one who can take you away from everything if you're bored and sad. Some books can really take you away. It's marvelous."

"You only live twice: Once when you are born And once when you look death in the face."

"Most motor-cars are conglomerations (this is a long word for bundles) of steel and wire and rubber and plastic, and electricity and oil and petrol and water, and the toffee papers you pushed down the crack in the back seat last Sunday. Smoke comes out of the back of them and horn-squawks out of the front, and they have white lights like big eyes in front, and red lights behind. And that is about that — just motor-cars, tin boxes on wheels for running about in. But some motorcars — mine, for instance, and perhaps yours — are different. If you get to like them and understand them, if you are kind to them and don't scratch their paint and bang their doors, if you fill them up and pump them up when they need it, of you keep them clean and polish and out the rain and snow as much as possible, you will find, you MAY find, that they become almost like persons — MORE than just ordinary persons — MAGICAL PERSONS!!!"

"Bond insisted ordering Leiter's Haig-and-Haig "on the rocks" and then he looked carefully at the barman. "A Dry Martini", he said. "One. In a deep champagne goblet." "Oui, monsieur." "Just a moment. Three measures of Gordons, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?" "Certainly, monsieur." The barman seemed pleased with the idea."

"Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action."

"The difference between a good golf shot and a bad one is the same difference between a beautiful and a plain woman — a matter of millimetres."

"Doctor No said, in the same soft resonant voice, ‘You are right. Mister Bond. That is just what I am, a maniac. All the greatest men are maniacs. They are possessed by a mania which drives them forward towards their goal. The great scientists, the artists, the philosophers, the religious leaders – all maniacs. What else but a blind singleness of purpose could have given focus to their genius, would have kept them in the groove of their purpose? Mania, my dear Mister Bond, is as priceless as genius. Dissipation of energy, fragmentation of vision, loss of momentum, the lack of follow-through — these are the vices of the herd.’ Doctor No sat slightly back in his chair. ‘I do not possess these vices. I am, as you correctly say, a maniac – a maniac, Mister Bond, with a mania for power. That’ – the black holes glittered blankly at Bond through the contact lenses – ‘is the meaning of my life. That is why I am here. That is why you are here. That is why here exists.’"

"And I would like a medium Vodka dry Martini — with a slice of lemon peel. Shaken and not stirred, please. I would prefer Russian or Polish vodka."

"Those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make bored."