People From Newcastle

"When I stopped touring in the early '80s for a few years, it was a mistake looking back. I lost touch with my audience in a way and I think that was a bad career move."

"All those rappers, they're the only glamorous people working in music now. The rock bands are rather drab, even the good ones. You definitely don't want to look at them. But some of those R&B people are very good."

"I like the name Atomic Kitten. It's so great."

"I don't think I've ever played the Olympia before, but I'm not totally sure."

"The way that the Nazis staged themselves and presented themselves, my Lord! I’m talking about the films of Leni Riefenstahl and the buildings of Albert Speer and the mass marches and the flags — just fantastic. Really beautiful."

"Compose aloud: poetry is a sound."

"There are the Alps. What is there to say about them? They don't make sense. Fatal glaciers, crags cranks climb, jumbled boulder and weed, pasture and boulder, scree, et l'on entend, maybe, le refrain joyeux et leger. Who knows what the ice will have scraped on the rock it is smoothing?There they are, you will have to go a long way round if you want to avoid them. It takes some getting used to. There are the Alps, fools! Sit down and wait for them to crumble!"

"Who says it's poetry, anyhow? My ten year old can do it and rhyme. Mr Hines says so, and he's a schoolteacher, he ought to know. Go and find work"

"Poetry? It's a hobby. I run model trains. Mr Shaw there breeds pigeons. It's not work. You don't sweat. Nobody pays for it. You could advertise soap."

"The sea has no renewal, no forgetting, no variety of death, is silent with the silence of a single note."

"Mine was a threeplank bed whereon I lay and cursed the weary sun. They took away the prison clothes and on the frosty nights I froze. I had a Bible where I read that Jesus came to raise the dead— I kept myself from going mad by singing an old bawdy ballad and birds sang on my windowsill and tortured me till I was ill"

"Remember, imbeciles and wits, sots and ascetics, fair and foul, young girls with little tender tits, that is written over all. Worn hides that scarcely clothe the soul they are so rotten, old and thin, or firm and soft and warm and full— fellmonger Death gets every skin."

"Then he saw his ghosts glitter with golden hands, the Emperor sliding up and up from his tomb alongside Charles. These things are not obliterate. White gobs spitten for mockery; and I too shall have , written over me."

"He whom we anatomized ‘whose words we gathered as pleasant flowers and thought on his wit and how neatly he described things’ speaks to us, hatching marrow, broody all night over the bones of a deadman."

"All you can usually say about a poem or a picture is, 'Look at it, listen to it.' Whether you listen to a piece of music or a poem, or look at a picture or a jug or a piece of sculpture, what matters about it is not what it has in common with others of its kind, but what is singularly its own.""

"Never explain- your reader is as smart as you. Your reader is not just any reader, but is the rare one with ears in his head."

"There is a need for what [Michael] Polanyi calls the critique of doubt. When we undertake to doubt any statement, we do so on the basis of beliefs which--in the act of doubting--we do not doubt. I can only doubt the truth of a statement on the ground of other things--usually a great many things--which I believe to be true. It is impossible at the same time to doubt both the statement, and the beliefs on the basis of which the statement is doubted."

"The necessary precondition for the birth of science as we know it is, it would seem, the diffusion through society of the belief that the universe is both rational and contingent. Such a belief is the presupposition of modern science and cannot by any conceivable argument be a product of science. One has to ask: Upon what is this belief founded?"

"So we already have the evidence of the dichotomy that runs through our culture. We all engage in purposeful activity, and we judge ourselves and others in terms of success in achieving the purposes that we set before ourselves. Yet we accept as the final product of this purposeful activity a picture of the world from which purpose has been eliminated. Purpose is a meaningful concept in relation to our own consciousness of ourselves, but it is allowed no place in our understanding of the world of facts."

"The leaders of this movement [The Religious Right in the United States], while accepting the biblical doctrine regarding the radical corruption of human nature by sin, in effect exempt themselves as "born-again Christians" from its operation. They identify their own cause unconditionally with the cause of God, regard their critics as agents of Satan, and are apparently prepared to see the human race obliterated in an apocalyptic catastrophe in which the nuclear arsenal of the United States is the instrument of Jesus for the fulfillment of his purpose against the Soviet Union as the citadel of evil. This confusion of a particular and fallible set of political and moral judgements with the cause of Jesus Christ is more dangerous than the open rejection of the claim of Christ in Islam [....] The "Religious Right" uses the name of Jesus to cover the absolute claims of one national tradition."

"What is striking about the books which were written, especially during the eighteenth century, to defend Christianity against these attacks, is the degree to which they accept the assumptions of their assailants. Christianity is defended as being reasonable. It can be accommodated within these assumptions, which all reasonable people hold. There is little suggestion that the assumptions themselves are to be challenged. The defense is, in fact, a tactical retreat. But, as later history has shown, these tactical retreats can--if repeated often enough--begin to look more like a rout."

"must we not say that it is part of the deep sickness of our culture that ever since Descartes, we have been seduced by the idea of a kind of knowledge which could not be doubted, in which we would be absolutely secure from personal risk? And has not this seduction taken two forms which, even if they disclaim all relationship with each other, are really twin brothers? One is biblical fundamentalism which supposes that adherence to the text of the Bible frees me from the risk of error and therefore gives me a security which does not depend on my own discernment of the truth. The other is a type of scientism which supposes that science is simply a transcript of reality, of the "facts" which simply have to be accepted and call for no personal decision on my part, a kind of knowledge which is "objective" and free from all the bias of subjectivity."

"The missionary calling has sometimes been interpreted as a calling to stem this fearful cataract of souls going to eternal perdition. But I do not find this in the center of the New Testament representation of the missionary calling."

"If the gospel is to challenge the public life of our society, if Christians are to occupy the "high ground" which they vacated in the noon time of "modernity," it will not be by forming a Christian political party, or by aggressive propaganda campaigns. Once again it has to be said that there can be no going back to the "Constantinian" era. It will only be by movements that begin with the local congregation in which the reality of the new creation is present, known, and experienced, and from which men and women will go into every sector of public life to claim it for Christ, to unmask the illusions which have remained hidden and to expose all areas of public life to the illumination of the gospel. But that will only happen as and when local congregations renounce an introverted concern for their own life, and recognize that they exist for the sake of those who are not members, as sign, instrument, and foretaste of God's redeeming grace for the whole life of society."

"That's a lot of hard work gone under the water, under the bridge."

"They will carry us over the finishing line every so often, and we’ll carry them over the line other times. It’s a mutual respect at the moment."

"Seriously if I had a gun I would have shot the plane down."

"I remember being asked at various stages last season "Would you take 17th place now?". Come the last game of the season, the answer was definitely yes. At the start of the season, then the answer was probably yes. But looking back at the season as a whole, then the answer is probably between yes and no."

"This is the start of the season for us - an 11-game season"

"Thirty minutes into the game, I was quite comfortable. Then they [...] got two goals back-to-back which certainly turned the game in their favour."

"I'm looking forward to the game because I think it will be a great spectacle. [...] He's the type of guy that can pull a rabbit out of the hat every so often and I'll be watching out for that."

"It's important that you win games at any level."

"The other night was like when my daughter was being born and I was in the waiting room. You are waiting for good news and obviously the good news didn't come through this time."

"The way the game is, players come to a football club with baggage. Whether that's positive or negative, they come to a new club with some luggage. Tony's baggage over the last four or five years has been not playing so many games at Tottenham."

"We were very hopeful of getting Fraizer all the way through. We'll keep in-house what went on, but we were involved with Fraizer until the moment he went to Tottenham."

"For me today, Hull City beat Hull City."

"In any game, you get pictures and at half time there were 11 players who had half a shirt for Saturday."

"You get pictures in pre-season. You get pictures of fitness, you get pictures of attitude, you get pictures of mentality, you get pictures of systems and the way players play and you also get pictures of whether people can step up to the plate in the Premier League. I was getting all those pictures in the first half"

"I know my best team, but my best team has got 15 players in it."

"It's hard to say how long he'll be out but he's 100 per cent doubtful for the weekend, that's for sure."

"When you compare the changing room to last season, there is a massive, massive difference. The changing room now is full of men"

"He had his hands full with Adi Akinbiyi when he came on, he had his hands full with Andy Gray from the start and in other ways he had his hands full with Kyle Lafferty and Robbie Blake as well. He's had four or five strikers coming at him and he's stood up to them manfully."

"Today's draw is another little brick in the wall."

"The lads are on top of the ground at the moment and they look as though they're looking forward to tomorrow."

"We gave ourselves a hill to climb and we climbed it."

"Those are the pictures you want from pre-season, so although we beat a Premiership side, I can take those away with me."

"Lee has been with the physio all week and hasn't trained. David Livermore has trained so the shoe is on the other foot there and he has thrown his hat into the ring."

"It was a fantastic result and credit has to go to the players. The application they have shown since I got the job has been first class. They've just asked for four or five days off this week, but I've said I want them back in on Tuesday."

"If you score first, you have a 75 per cent chance of not losing the game. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to work out that you have to get off to a good start and score."

"Dean Marney has also thrown his hat into the ring after Saturday. The more hats there are in the ring, the harder my job is"