Novelists From Wales

"“Passing through?” “Yes; here to meet with Moody.” “You’ll get more sense from lichen. What’s with your head?” Unlike talking to The Notable Goodnight, where I needed to be polite, this was an answer I could have fun with. “It’s the final stages of an excruciatingly painful and incurable genital wasting disease. Luckily, it’s only spread by skin contact. Sorry, I should’ve said that before I shook your hand. Remiss of me – apologies.” Shamanic Bob smiled. “Fair enough,” he said. “I think I deserved that.” “Yes, I think you did.”"

"More welcoming were a couple of Welsh Tourist Board posters. One was advertising the local area with the now-universal slogan “Visit Wales – Not Always Raining.”"

"“You need to delay the train.” “How do I do that?” “Your head on the rails?” “Seriously?” “I don’t know. But put it this way: if you don’t delay the train, I will punch you five times hard in the head.” “Once would probably be enough as a punishment.” “You don’t need to be punished, you need motivating. And not getting punched five times is a terrific motivator. Take my word for it.”"

"“Jealous?” she said. “Of what you have to offer? A second-rate Consul and a third-rate vaudeville act peddling fourth-rate advice to a fifth-rate Novice?”"

"“What do you think?” “I can hardly contain my indifference.”"

"“Haven’t I seen your face somewhere else?” “No, it’s always been right here on the front of my head.”"

"Mr. McGregor’s a nasty piece of work, isn’t he? Quite the Darth Vader of children’s literature."

"“Do you know what the worst bit about dying is?” “Tell me, Gran.” “You never get to see how it all turns out.”"

"It wasn’t going to be hard—it was going to be impossible. It wouldn’t deter me. I’d done impossible things several times in the past, and the prospect didn’t scare me as much as it used to."

"Marriage, like spinach and opera, was something I had never thought I would like."

"“Well,” he said thoughtfully, “it is my considered opinion that most coincidences are simply quirks of chance—if you extrapolate the bell curve of probability you will find statistical abnormalities that seem unusual but are, in actual fact, quite likely, given the amount of people on the planet and the amount of different things we do in our lives.”"

"“We’re fine, Joff. You?” “Not that good, Thurs. The Church of the Global Standard Deity has undergone a split.” “No!” I said with his much surprise and concern in my voice as I could muster. “I’m afraid so. The new Global Standard Clockwise Deity have broken away due to unresolvable differences over the direction in which the collection plate is passed round.” “Another split? That’s the third this week!” “Fourth,” replied Joffy dourly, “and it’s only Tuesday. The Standardized pro-Baptist conjoined Methodarian-Lutherian sisters of something-or-other split into two subgroups yesterday. Soon,” he added grimly, “there won’t be enough ministers to man the splits.”"

"“He said you were very dangerous.” “No more dangerous than anyone else who dares to speak the truth.”"

"My father told me that for the most part coincidences could be safely ignored: they were merely that chance discovery of one pertinent fact from a million or so possible daily interconnections. “Stop a stranger in the street,” he would say, “and delve into each other’s past. Pretty soon an astounding-too-amazing-to-be-chance coincidence will appear.”"

"I could almost see common sense and denial fighting away at each other within her. In the end, denial won, as it so often does."

"You’ve got a face longer than a Dickens novel."

"The industrial age had only just begun; the planet had reached its Best Before date."

"“It’s easy. A lobotomized monkey could do it.” “And where are we going to find a lobotomized monkey at this time of night?”"

"“James Crometty!” demanded Bowden. “Did you kill him?” “I kill a lot of people,” whispered Felix7. “I don’t remember names.” “You shot him six times in the face.” The dying killer smiled. “That I remember.” “Six times! Why?” Felix7 frowned and started to shiver. “Six was all I had,” he answered simply."

"Edward, Edward," he said with a patronising smile, "there are no unanswered questions of any relevance. Every question that we need to ask has been answered fully. If you can't find the correct answer then you are obviously asking the wrong question."

"Like any other big government department, it looks good on paper but is an utter shambles. Petty infighting and political agendas, arrogance and sheer bloody-mindedness almost guarantees that the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing."

"“It was a coincidence.” “I don’t believe in coincidences.” “Neither do I. That’s a coincidence, isn’t it?”"

"Don’t ever call me mad, Mycroft. I’m not mad. I’m just...well, differently moraled, that’s all."

"My father said it was a delightfully odd—and dangerously self-destructive—quirk of humans that we were far more interested in pointless trivia then in genuine news stories."

"If from poetry we expect a succession of signals for the release of miscellaneous private emotion we are likely to find Tears, Idle Tears valuable."

"We all like to think of ourselves as a standard, and I can see that it is genuinely difficult for the English middle class to suppose that the working class is not desperately anxious to become just like itself. I am afraid this must be unlearned."

"Shaw's association with Fabianism is of great importance, for it marks the confluence of two traditions which had been formerly separate and even opposed. Fabianism, in the orthodox person of Sidney Webb, is the direct inheritor of the spirit of John Stuart Mill; that is to say, of an utilitarianism refined by experience of a new situation in history. Shaw, on the other hand, is the direct successor of the spirit of Carlyle and of Ruskin, but he did not go the way of his elder successor, William Morris."

"The shaping influence of economic change can of course be distinguished, as most notably in the period with which this book is concerned. But the difficulty lies in estimating the final importance of a factor which never, in practice, appears in isolation."

"My own view is that if, in a socialist society, the basic cultural skills are made widely available, and the channels of communication widened and cleared, as much as possible has been done in the way of preparation, and what then emerges will be an actual response to the whole reality, and so valuable."

"Every aspect of personal life is radically affected by the quality of general life, and yet the general life is seen at its most important in completely personal terms."

"The gap between our feelings and our social observation is dangerously wide."

"Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language."

"It is then in making hope practical, rather than despair convincing, that we must resume and change and extend our campaigns."

"It is as if a really secure nationalism, already in possession of its nation-state, can fail to see itself as 'nationalist' at all. Its own distinctive bonding is perceived as natural and obvious by contrast with the mere projections of any nationalism which is still in active progress and thus incomplete. At this point radicals and minority nationalists emphasize the artificialities of the settled 'common sense' nation-state and to their own satisfaction shoot them to pieces from history and from social theory."

"Real independence is a time of new and active creation: people sure enough of themselves to discard their baggage; knowing the past is past, as shaping history, but with a new confident sense of the present and the future, where the decisive meanings and values will be made."

"There has never been a time, until the last fifty years, when a majority of any population had regular and constant access to drama, and used this access. . . . It seems probable that in societies like Britain and the United States more drama is watched in a week or weekend, by the majority of viewers, than would have been watched in a year or in some cases a lifetime in any previous historical period. It is clearly one of the unique characteristics of advanced industrial societies that drama as an experience is now an intrinsic part of everyday life, at a quantitative level which is so very much greater than any precedent as to seem a fundamental qualitative change. Whatever the social and cultural reasons may finally be, it is clear that watching dramatic simulation of a wide range of experiences is now an essential part of our modern cultural pattern."

"The most advanced socialist thought in England is Raymond Williams’ superbly intricate and persuasive work... Any English Marxism will have to measure itself against this landmark in our social thought."

"Nothing could be more wrongheaded than the English disputes about Dylan Thomas's greatness ... He is a dazzling obscure writer who can be enjoyed without understanding."

"It’s the place where poetry comes to die … That’s me."

"In that way, I disagree with Dylan Thomas and what he said in his poem, "Do not go gentle into that good night..." When life is through with me, I want to say to it as you would say to a lover, or a friend, or a child: 'Goodbye! It's been a ball...truly. And thank you.'"

"Here in Israel, of course, every generation backs away from its parents. Rebels against the old. That has always been the case, and not here alone. Take, for example, Dylan Thomas, now largely ignored. You may be sure that in a few years some Yale professor will rediscover his genius."

"Ambition is critical"

"Swansea is the graveyard of ambition"

"When one burns one's bridges, what a very nice fire it makes."

"He who seeks rest finds boredom. He who seeks work finds rest."

"The joy and function of poetry is, and was, the celebration of man, which is also the celebration of God."

"The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps in the works of the poem so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash, or thunder in."

"You can tear a poem apart to see what makes it technically tick, and say to yourself, when the works are laid out before you, the vowels, the consonants, the rhymes and rhythms, "Yes, this is it. This is why the poem moves me so. It is because of the craftsmanship." But you're back again where you began. You're back with the mystery of having been moved by words."

"I fell in love — that is the only expression I can think of — at once, and am still at the mercy of words, though sometimes now, knowing a little of their behavior very well, I think I can influence them slightly and have even learned to beat them now and then, which they appear to enjoy."

"I did not care what the words said, overmuch, nor what happened to Jack & Jill & the Mother Goose rest of them; I cared for the shapes of sound that their names, and the words describing their actions, made in my ears; I cared for the colours the words cast on my eyes."