Novelists From England

"Cherie Blair can call herself a feminist all she likes, but any feminist worth her salt would have made a point of having a termination - on the NHS, naturally - when she got knocked up the last time. . . Famous women would rather admit to having been sexually abused as children than to having had a termination. . . Myself, I'd as soon weep over my taken tonsils or my absent appendix as snivel over those [five] abortions. I had a choice, and I chose life - mine."

"The only kind of socialist to be is a Stalinist, and the only kind of woman to be is a Bitch."

"The problem is she doesn’t have any in-depth knowledge. I can imagine her endlessly watching the film Exodus with Paul Newman. She’s got a kind of Hollywood view of Jews. You know, ‘Jews are so clever, we’ve survived ..."

"A woman who looks like a girl and thinks like a man is the best sort, the most enjoyable to be with and the most pleasurable to have and to hold."

"Will [Self] loomed over my second marriage, lurked throughout my very enjoyable six months of lesbianism, and has seen considerable active service in my rich and strange inner life over the years since then."

"I got through the sexual side of my first marriage - for six years! - by pretending that my husband was my friend Peter York."

"Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, or just completely, the correct response to death's perfect punctuation mark is a smile."

"I can only point out that, the higher a mind’s development, the more it discovers in the universe to occupy it."

"Whenever I am sent a new book on the lively arts, the first thing I do is look for myself in the index."

"We may be saddled with Bush and Blair, but you've got Prince Charles (a big friend of the Islamic world, probably because of its large number of feudal kingdoms and hardline attitude to uppity women), the Catholic church (taking a brief break from buggering babies to condemn any western attack as "morally unacceptable") and posturing pansies such as Sean Penn, Sheryl Crow and Damon Albarn."

"Though all were devout, and blasphemy was regarded with horror, the general attitude to the deity was one of blasphemous commercialism."

"Today we should welcome, and even study, every serious attempt to envisage the future of our race; not merely in order to grasp the very diverse and often tragic possibilities that confront us, but also that we may familiarize ourselves with the certainty that many of our most cherished ideals would seem puerile to more developed minds. To romance of the far future, then, is to attempt to see the human race in its cosmic setting, and to mould our hearts to entertain new values."

"The freedom that women were supposed to have found in the Sixties largely boiled down to easy contraception and abortion; things to make life easier for men, in fact."

"Prostitution is the supreme triumph of capitalism.... Worst of all, prostitution reinforces all the old dumb clichés about women's sexuality; that they are not built to enjoy sex and are little more than walking masturbation aids, things to be DONE TO, things so sensually null and void that they have to be paid to indulge in fornication, that women can be had, bought, as often as not sold from one man to another. When the sex war is won prostitutes should be shot as collaborators for their terrible betrayal of all women, for the moral tarring and feathering they give indigenous women who have had the bad luck to live in what they make their humping ground."

"A good part — and definitely the most fun part — of being a feminist is about frightening men. American and Australian feminists have always known this, and absorbed it cheerfully into their act; one thinks of julienning men on phone- in shows, or telling us that a good feminist is rude to a man at least three times a day on principle. Of course, there's a lot more to feminism... but scaring the shit out of scumbags is an amusing and necessary part because, sadly, a good many men still respect nothing but strength,"

"Increasingly I suspected that this race, in spite of all its triumphs, was now living on the great ideas of its past, mouthing concepts that it no longer had the sensibility to understand, paying verbal homage to ideals which it could no longer sincerely will, and behaving within a system of institutions many of which could only be worked successfully by minds of a slightly finer temper."

"Sunsets in pictures are so tiresome, but only boors and half-wits are not stirred by real sunsets."

"Even when all the worlds have frozen or exploded, and all the suns gone dead and cold, there'll still be time. Oh, God, what for?"

"In man, social intercourse has centred mainly on the process of absorbing fluid into the organism, but in the domestic dog and to a lesser extent among all wild canine species, the act charged with most social significance is the excretion of fluid."

"Of course I don't want the old religious dope. But I don't want just the new science dope either. I want the truth."

"She curled her lip. She had discovered cynicism."

"“I was arguing with Father Sebastian the other day,” she said thoughtfully. “I quoted the thing about giving all you have to the poor. He said that was all very well but you had to come to terms with the Scriptures and realize there had to be teachers and leaders for the people’s own good. It seemed an awful get-out to me, and I couldn’t help saying so. I told him if the Church would sell half her altar plate she could buy shoes for everybody in the country, and a lot else besides; and that if the Pope would make a start in Rome I’d see about getting rid of a few job lots of furniture down in Corfe. I’m afraid he didn’t take very kindly to it. I know it was wrong of me but he annoys me sometimes; he’s so pious, and it seems to mean so very little. He’d walk miles in the snow to pray for a sick child, he’s a very good man; but if there was more money about to start with, maybe the child wouldn’t have been taken ill. It all seems so unnecessary....”"

"She stopped dead; and the look in her eyes showed plainly she’d just received the import of a crude lesson in economics."

"The waves were indifferent, and the wind; and the rocks neither knew nor cared who owned them, Christ’s Vicar or an English King."

"“Confession,” he said, “must be sincere. It must come from the heart. False confession, made to avoid the pain of Questioning, is useless to Church and God alike. Our aim is salvation; the salvation of the souls of these poor wretches in our charge, if necessary by the breaking of their bodies. Set against this, all else is straw in the wind.”"

"He like the Church he serves is blind and empty and vainglorious. This God they prattle on about, where’s His justice, where’s His compassion? Does it please Him to see dying people hounded in His name, does He snigger at His bumbling priests, is He satisfied when men drop dead chopping stone out for His temples, twisted little God dying tepid-faced on a cross....She thought, I’ll go out and look for other gods, and maybe they’ll be better and anyway they can’t be worse."

"She said faintly, “Are you...real?” Amusement showed in his face. “Real?” he said. “Define reality and I can answer you.” He waved a hand. “Look into solid earth, into rock, and see the galaxies of all Creation. What you call reality melts; there is a whirling, a spinning of forces, a dance of motes and atoms. Some of them we call planets, one of them is Earth. Nothingness within nothingness enclosing nothing, that is reality. Tell me what you want, and I can answer.”"

"It’s a terrible thing, being afraid. It’s like an illness; like wanting to fall down, and not being able to faint. You see you never get used to it. You live with it and live with it and every day it’s worse; and one day it’s the worst of all. I thought, when it...happened, I wouldn’t be afraid. But I was wrong...."

"The years had a way of piling themselves one atop the next, unnoticed and uncounted; that was how young men turned into old ones."

"A death was more than an ending; it was like pulling a thread from a richly patterned cloth."

"“If you opt out, you don’t change anything.” “Why should I run round helping to get power for a group of idiots who’ll end up just as dangerous as the ones already in power?” You really don’t think anyone can make things better?” “No. What’s going to happen will happen.”"

"“Frankly Jess, on the grand scale—” “You can’t think on the grand scale. You have to think on the small scale. Otherwise no-one’d ever do anything.”"

"Every other method of resolving this difference of opinion has failed. We are reduced to violence, which is the last resort."

"I thought it was normal, that’s the thing. When you’re little you think everything is normal. If your mother had a pointed head and green ears you’d think it’s normal. Only when you grow up do you realise that not everybody is like that. Gradually you can even come to learn that the time you are living in is strange too, that it hasn’t always been like this. The more you feel uncomfortable and unconfident and want to find a way to be like everyone else and fit in, the more normality runs away from you because there isn’t any such thing. Or if there is, you have to find someone else who’ll agree with you what it is. Which I seem singularly unable to do."

"But naturally people fussed and objected like they always do when someone tries to do something positive."

"That’s almost like the daft things you believe when you’re really little, like I use to believe I could fly. I believed it for years, but it had to be kept secret. I knew if I ever told anyone or showed it off to anyone, I’d lose the power. And if I doubted it, and tried it out just to see, I’d lose the power — so I didn’t. I believed in it. I knew I would be able to fly when there really was a need. Which, fortunately for me, there never was."

"I will win the crowd. I will give them something they have never seen before."

"She hasnt gone so far now, she had broken a lot of rules and said such rude things, that she knew she would suffer the most horrible punishment; and since what was done could not be undone, she was free to be as bad as she wanted to be."

""I wish there were no more exams ever," said Kestrel. "I wish nothing bad happens to Kess," said Bowman. "I wish my darling children to be safe and happy for ever," said their mother. She always wished like that when she was worried. "I wish the wind singer would sing again," said their father."

"Brothers, what we do in life, echoes in eternity."

"Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn fast."

"Self-sufficiency is the enemy of salvation. If you are self-sufficient, you have no need of God. If you have no need of God, you do not seek Him. If you do not seek Him, you will not find Him."

"The song of the wind singer will set you free."

"The English seem to think drinking wine is like committing adultery, something you do rarely and abroad."

"We read to know that we are not alone."

"That's where we have to go," said Kestrel, looking at the mountain. "Into the fire."

"She slapped Kestrel's face. Without thinking twice, Kestrel slapped her back, as hard as she could. The young woman burst into tears. The servant saw this, aghast. "Baby!" she exclaimed. "Oh, my poor baby!" "You've been kind to me," said Kestrel, "and you're very beautiful, but if you hit me again I'll kill you.""

"Today begins my walk with you." They spoke together, their voices sounding softly in the cold air. "Where you go, I go. Where you stay, I stay. When you sleep, I will sleep. When you rise, I will rise. I will pass my days within the sound of your voice, and my nights within the reach of your hand. And none shall come between us."

"If everything you do is in order to do something else, when do you ever get to the end of it all?"

"'I don't want to do any of those things you said. I want – I want – to make things right.' 'Then so you shall.' 'Is it so easy?' 'Not easy. Not easy at all. Think how much is wanting to make things wrong. All the fear in the world, and the violence that comes from the fear, and the hatred that comes from the violence, and the loneliness that comes from the hatred. All the unhappiness, all the cruelty, it gathers like clouds in the air, and grows dark and cold and heavy, and falls like grey snow in thick layers over the land. Then the world is all muffled and numb, and no one can hear each other or feel each other. Think how sad and lonely that must be."