People From London

"We are Diana’s virgin train, Descended of no mortal strain: Our bows and arrows are our goods, Our palaces the lofty woods. * * * If you ask where such wights do dwell, In what blest clime, that so excel, The poets only that can tell."

"... pick up one of those superb books such as Private Gardens of England, by , on a wild, wet afternoon in February when the wind is shrilling outside, moaning through the gaps and spattering the window with rain. Turn to a picture of Saling Hall showing blues and silvers against the static severity of s, or see the black and white photographs of roses, cobbles and at , in which there's a table and chairs glimpsed through an open door in the garden wall. Books such as these are indeed a strong element of the whole pleasure of gardening; they need to be devoured and mulled over as well as those which are carried round in an earthy hand as vital advice flows out on what to do with five hundred s at the s."

"What ever happy region is thy place, Cease thy celestial song a little space; (Thou wilt have time enough for hymns divine, Since Heav'n's eternal year is thine.)"

"An Austrian army, awfully arrayed, Boldly by battery besieged Belgrade. Cossack commanders cannonading come, Dealing destruction's devastating doom."

"Margaret's ardour as a catholic was always remarkable."

"She was a woman of great gifts both natural and supernatural, she had marvellous faith and wonderful determination."

"I have dwelt thus at length on Hamlet's melancholy because, from the psychological point of view, it is the centre of the tragedy, and to omit it from consideration or to underrate its intensity is to make Shakespeare's story unintelligible. But the psychological point of view is not equivalent to the tragic; and, having once given its due weight to the fact of Hamlet's melancholy, we may freely admit, or rather may be anxious to insist, that this pathological condition would excite but little, if any, tragic interest if it were not the condition of a nature distinguished by that speculative genius on which the Schlegel–Coleridge type of theory lays stress. Such theories misinterpret the connection between that genius and Hamlet's failure, but still it is this connection which gives to his story its peculiar fascination and makes it appear (if the phrase may be allowed) as the symbol of a tragic mystery inherent in human nature. Wherever this mystery touches us, wherever we are forced to feel the wonder and awe of man's godlike 'apprehension' and his 'thoughts that wander through eternity,' and at the same time are forced to see him powerless in his petty sphere of action, and powerless (it would appear) from the very divinity of his thought, we remember Hamlet. And this is the reason why, in the great ideal movement which began towards the close of the eighteenth century, this tragedy acquired a position unique among Shakespeare's dramas, and shared only by Goethe's Faust. It was not that Hamlet is Shakespeare's greatest tragedy or most perfect work of art; it was that Hamlet most brings home to us at once the sense of the soul's infinity, and the sense of the doom which not only circumscribes that infinity but appears to be its offspring."

"It is a spirit. It comes we know not whence. It will not speak at our bidding, nor answer in our language. It is not our servant; it is our master."

"I dreamt last night that Shakespeare’s Ghost Sat for a civil service post. The English paper for that year Had several questions on King Lear, Which Shakespeare answered very badly Because he hadn’t read his Bradley."

"I, for one ought not to be unsympathising towards those who are really struggling out of darkness into light. Can I forget, though now more than a quarter of a century ago, the hopes and fears by which I have myself been agitated? I found myself in a Communion, with a growing dislike of its tone, its history, and (I must add) its living authorities. I found myself, in the same measure, drawn towards that true home, centre of hearts and minds, where nothing was national, sectional, narrow, cold, or ambiguous; where doctrine was clear as a trumpet-tone, and sympathy and healing soft as a mother's whisper to her sick child."

"Friendship exists only when there is truth and loyalty."

"When I walk in a room, I think people think, Oh, shit. It's Annabelle."

"He was my brother, my boyfriend, my soulmate. Most of the time people called me Mrs McQueen. Quite often we were sharing a bed. The truth is I was happier with Lee than with anyone else. He asked me to marry him towards the end and I said no. I wish now that I had said yes."

"Annabelle was always slightly a tortured soul, Actually, if I really think back to it, the show was not the right platform for someone like Annabelle, Although you want people who have explosive personalities who maybe cope with life differently, you also don't really want to have people who can't cope with life. She didn't have a coping mechanism when we would all have to talk behind her back, she didn't understand it because she was always the cool girl at school. So something like this was very negative for her and such a very, very negative experience. She couldn't say in her head, 'It's a TV show, It's a TV show.' It's incredibly hard. Somebody like me who went to boarding school and can block stuff out, not deal with my emotions — she could not do that. This was just not a great platform for her."

"I don’t believe in empire, and I actively resist colonialism and its toxic and enduring legacy."

"Mia is a unicorn of an actress. It’s not like you could ever say, ‘We need a Mia Goth type,’ because there is no type. There’s just Mia."

"I saw acting as a way to get out of the situation I was in. That’s really what made me work as hard as I did. It was my driving force. ‘If this doesn’t work, then I’m going to go back to that, and I can’t let that be. So this needs to work. There’s no plan B. I have to do whatever it takes to make this scene good, to make sure that I’m good enough as an actor."

"Like everybody else, I was blown away. That’s when I said, 'However she makes the sauce, I would love to cook with her. What she was doing in Pearl was incredibly hard to do. I thought, My God, she just did a quadruple somersault over a fire pit."

"Acting is the only thing I do, the only thing I know. It’s a marathon for me. There is a lot of thought that goes into the choices I make as an actor and the films I decide to do. It’s important to fill up your life with varied experiences, then return to set, a sacred place to release and reveal. Each time I’m cast, it feels like a miracle, and I prepare as if it might be my last role—an energy that makes me work harder and be more present on set."

"I would wake up very early, put my phone on a timer for maybe an hour at a time, and write in the style of a stream of consciousness, rather than script form, because I found that to be an obstacle in me getting my ideas down. I would write as Pearl, as me … but Pearl is me. I mean, all my characters are me, turned up or turned down. It’s all me exploring different facets of myself."

"In the beginning of my career, I was just happy to be in a movie. ‘I'll just do whatever you give me. I'll be there.’ As time has progressed, I view myself as more valuable, with more to give than just being in a movie. Working with Ti [West] and being involved from the start has shown me I can have agency over the creative process. A meaningful voice can go beyond acting—screenwriting, producing, having input—and that has become clearer. It's about more than being happy to be here; it's about making great cinema."

"You have to be fierce as an actor. It’s not the actor’s job to be interesting; that’s the script’s job. It’s our job to be truthful and brave."

"To know [that] the lead of a movie is willing to basically do whatever to make the movie is a good feeling. That inspires the confidence to push things. Movies like Pearl and MaXXXine can be just that little bit wilder than they would have been otherwise. And that’s fun."

"The truth is, I hate acting. Acting is actually the hardest thing to do. It's this elusive thing and you think you have it—it’s like trying to grip smoke. I love it so much."

"So often in films there are two ways a female can be portrayed: either innocent and virginal or the complete opposite. You never have the middle ground, and I was really keen to portray a realistic, honest approach of who I think a young woman would be in this situation – strong and independent."

"It was a good 10 hours in the makeup chair, and then I’d go and do a 12-hour day on set, and the makeup artist, Sarah Rubano, who was incredible, would constantly be touching me up and making sure my contacts were all right and all those sorts of things."

"I see Elizabeth as a butterfly or a moth. She’s fluttering and trying to find her place in this world."

"Multæ terricolis linguæ, cœlestibus una."

"Πολλαὶ μὲν θνητοῖς γλῶτται, μία δ'ἀθανάτοισιν."

"Dunkirk was to hold out until the day on which all the Allied troops in the pocket who could embark to Britain had done so. Ramsay and the British Government initially assumed that no more than 45,000 troops could be saved, but over the nine days between dawn on Sunday, 26 May and 03.30 on Tuesday, 4 June, no fewer than 338,226 Allied soldiers were rescued from death or capture, 118,000 of whom were French, Belgian and Dutch. Operation Dynamo – so named because Ramsay’s bunker at Dover had housed electrical equipment during the Great War – was the largest military evacuation in history so far, and a fine logistical achievement, especially as daylight sailings had to be suspended on 1 June due to heavy Luftwaffe attacks."

"It was on 7 March 1936 that Hitler comprehensively violated the Versailles Treaty by sending troops into the industrial region of the Rhineland, which under Article 180 had been specifically designated a demilitarized zone. Had the German Army been opposed by the French and British forces stationed near by, it had orders to retire back to base and such a reverse would almost certainly have cost Hitler the chancellorship. Yet the Western powers, riven with guilt about having imposed what was described as a ‘Carthaginian peace’ on Germany in 1919, allowed the Germans to enter the Rhineland unopposed."

"Essentially a compromise between Roman and common law, the Code Napoléon consisted of a reasoned and harmonious body of laws that were to be the same across all territories administered by France, for the first time since the Emperor Justinian. The rights and duties of the government and its citizens were codified in 2,281 articles covering 493 pages in prose so clear that Stendhal said he made it his daily reading. The new code helped cement national unity, not least because it was based on the principles of freedom of person and contract. It confirmed the end of ancient class privileges, and (with the exception of primary education) of ecclesiastical control over any aspect of French civil society. Above all, it offered stability after the chaos of the Revolution"

"On 20 November, front-line troops got 500 grams of bread per day, factory workers received 250, and everyone else 125 (that is, two slices). ‘Twigs were collected and stewed,’ records an historian of the siege. ‘Peat shavings, cottonseed cake, bonemeal was pressed into use. Pine sawdust was processed and added to the bread. Mouldy grain was dredged from sunken barges and scraped out of the holds of ships. Soon Leningrad bread was containing 10% cottonseed cake that had been processed to remove poisons. Household pets, shoe leather, fir bark and insects were consumed, as was wallpaper paste which was reputed to be made with potato flour. Guinea pigs, white mice and rabbits were saved from vivisection in the city’s laboratories for a more immediately practical fate. ‘Today it is so simple to die,’ wrote one resident, Yelena Skryabina, in her diary. ‘You just begin to lose interest, then you lie on your bed and you never get up again. Yet some people were willing to go to any lengths in order to survive: 226 people were arrested for cannibalism during the siege. ‘Human meat is being sold in the markets,’ concluded one secret NKVD report, ‘while in the cemeteries bodies pile up like carcasses, without coffins.’"

"Vaunting ambition can be a terrible thing, but if allied to great ability – a protean energy, grand purpose, the gift of oratory, near-perfect recall, superb timing, inspiring leadership – it can bring about extraordinary outcomes."

"Napoleon taught ordinary people that they could make history, and convinced his followers they were taking part in an adventure, a pageant, an experiment, an epic whose splendour would draw the attention of posterity for centuries to come."

"Grossly to oversimplify the contributions made by the three leading members of the Grand Alliance in the Second World War, if Britain had provided the time and Russia the blood necessary to defeat the Axis, it was America that produced the weapons."

"Despite hating mobs and technically being a nobleman, Napoleon welcomed the Revolution. At least in its early stages it accorded well with the Enlightenment ideals he had ingested from his reading of Rousseau and Voltaire."

"More books have been written with Napoleon in the title than there have been days since his death in 1821. Admittedly, many have titles like Napoleon’s Haemorrhoids and Napoleon’s Buttons, but there are several thousand comprehensive, cradle-to-grave biographies too."

"The Second World War lasted for 2,174 days, cost $1.5 trillion and claimed the lives of over 50 million people. That represents 23,000 lives lost every day, or more than six people killed every minute, for six long years."

"Between 1793 and 1797, the French would lose 125 warships to Britain’s 38, including 35 capital vessels (ships-of-the-line) to Britain’s 11, most of the latter the result of fire, accidents and storms rather than French attack. The maritime aspect of grand strategy was always one of Napoleon’s weaknesses: in all his long list of victories, none was at sea."

"How manifold are the grounds of thankfulness to God in our daily life, if only we would take the trouble to look for them ; if only we were as ready to note His mercies as He is ready to bestow them."

"The most memorable thing I did in that film, I believe, was my screaming. In almost all my movies since, I've been called upon to scream. I don't know if it's by chance, but I would like to think that I'm not hired for that talent alone."

"I remember another solo trip, on the Berengaria, sailing from New York to Southampton. It was during Prohibition, and two acquaintances were aboard, fellows who were connected with a museum. I had brought a bottle of Scotch with me, and I used it to tempt them to talk. Like a sort of truth serum. Well, one of these fellows confided in me that he liked to wear a tiger-skin belt next to his skin — inside out, with the fur next to him. Facts like that make one feel blue-eyed and normal."

"She's better on stage, from a distance. On a screen, close up, she makes you want to dive for cover."

"There is no such thing as a person that nothing has happened to, and each person's story is as different as his fingerprints."

"Stardom is all hard work, aspirins and purgatives."

"She looked as though butter wouldn't melt in her mouth—or anywhere else."

"And what I would ask is that however people are responding to the tragedy of Hurricane Melissa, that they would do whatever they can to help find out which organizations can help. I’m personally aware of an organization called Breds. They are based in Treasure Beach, but there are other organizations, and I would just ask, please, please, please donate whatever you can because obviously the need is huge. Had Melissa not happened, there would be significant need in Jamaica. That’s the nature of the economics of Jamaica. This tragedy has just exacerbated everything, so please give what you can"

"I do have family there, and I am intending on actually shooting a film there that I’m going to direct and co-produce and act in. As a person of Jamaican extraction, I’m always looking for ways in which I can contribute meaningfully to the island. And for me, making my film in Jamaica is a way of contributing and putting people to work. And so Jamaica is never far from my thoughts and how I can help and contribute"

"People need to be aware that at the best of times, the infrastructure in Jamaica needs a lot to be desired. So for an island like Jamaica to suffer this kind of a tragedy is even more devastating"