People From London

"Love is the prism through which I view the world. I truly believe it binds and propels us. This isn’t a naive denial of the darkness that we know exists in the world; rather it is a refusal to allow the devastation, the horror, or the heartache to consume us."

"Wastemen are aptly called so because they waste our time. Waste our energy. On purpose. They sell us dreams and then take them away, so we end up chasing them as if it was ever a reality."

"I couldn’t believe I was letting my ex-boyfriend risk the security of my bag. Money before honeys. No. Men weren’t honeys. Scratch that. Fees before The D. Contracts before Phone Contacts. Those were all terrible and I cannot believe someone is paying me to write. I opened up Instagram to distract myself."

"He wasn't my type. At all. And yet there was something about him that made me want to be his type."

"Love is not about finding someone to live with, it's about finding someone you can't imagine living without"

"I didn't like doing things I wasn't good at, but it turned out I loved learning how to love with him."

"They enjoyed the glamour but not the gore, not knowing that the gore was what gave the glamour its gleam."

"Thank you for letting me love you. Thank you for loving me back. Thank you for staying, I know it was hard sometimes. I hope you now live free."

"Time and love are intertwined, they are both measures of life, they are the two clocks. And, for love to operate as it should, it is imperative that the timing should be right."

"Pieces of me fell into place. I was growing into what I should be. We were growing. It wasn't as if our love built me, it's that it galvanized me, making me stronger because he saw me fully, the best and worst parts."

"Men who actually considered themselves to be the "good ones" and yet-between the Africans on one side and the women on the other-never knew where to expect the next challenge to their God-given authority and therefore fought preemptively on every front at once."

"You never really know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice."

"Can we start the show?” I smiled into the mic and adjusted the headphones on my ears, slid a knob on the mixing desk down, and switched to a soft neo-soul instrumental, turning it down low."

"Love is a worn-out concept anyway—and one that quickly leads to terrible decisions and, even worse, pop music.["

"Before my eyes an all-encompassing blackness spread. A hole. Were I to fall into it, there would be no escape."

"Aren’t you tired of mandem using your hearts for sport? I ask this now because I heard there’s a new player in town. And I won’t lie, he’s kind of cute too. A snack. A beverage. But you guys know that too much coffee is bad for you, right?"

"Time was constructed with love in mind."

"Eros pulled Psy so close to him there was no real demarcation between her heartbeat and his, and when they kissed, with Olympus beneath their feet and the sky surrounding them, Eros felt as if what they had was not just above the world as they knew it, but beyond it, out of its touch, its scope, itself a propelling energy that catapulted and vacuumed them into their own universe."

"It was the kind of lovemaking that has you feeling more beautiful the next day; walking smugly with a sway, hips swishing, with a nimbus of power and joy around you."

"The smile he gave her was mainstream, pop, radio-friendly. The smile he’d given me was the single released after an artist had established themselves, found their voice, could speak directly to their target audience. The smile he’d given me had more R&B to it."

"You're going to struggle to find any politician in the Western world who hasn't had things to say in response to Donald Trump."

"I would say that that wasn't strong enough... I don't care how elected they were: so was the far right in Germany."

""We cannot be blown off course by an imperialist fascist" (Talking about Vladimir Putin)"

"The president's threats to NATO and the U.N. are no more logical than arson. His trade wars with the E.U. and China could trigger the next great economic crisis of our times. Trump is not only a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathizing sociopath. He is also a profound threat to the international order that has been the foundation of Western progress for so long."

"The world does not need any more white saviours. As I’ve said before, this just perpetuates tired and unhelpful stereotypes. Let’s instead promote voices from across the continent of Africa and have serious debate."

"as Caribbean people we are not going to forget our history — we don't just want to hear an apology, we want reparation!"

"I am here, because you were there. We are here, because you were there."

"My own career in law and politics owes so much to the U.S., which gave me the honor of becoming the first black Briton to study at Harvard Law School. The land of the free has overwhelmingly been a force for progress around the world. When Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of his dreams for emancipation in the 1950s and 1960s, he empowered black people far beyond America’s 50 states."

"The alternative is to appeal to the country's latent progressive majority that goes back decades. Last Thursday, this progressive vote amounted to over 60%, while the Tories scored just 29%. To mobilise it means recognising that difference and diversity, within a broadly common value set, is a strength not a weakness and that the best future is negotiated not imposed. Critically it allows us to win elections by speaking to the interests of the centre and left, not the right."

"We need a political class that can spend and regulate in the right way, that knows its job isn't to usher in a better world for us, but to create the conditions in which we can build it ourselves. [[Caroline Lucas|[Caroline] Lucas]] knew that, but our political and democratic system is so broken it fails to people like her; it wears them down and spits them out."

"[T]he case for PR has been ratcheted up enormously by how disproportionate the outcome of the election was, up against a Labour-ist mindset that means justify ends and it doesn’t really matter, democratically, how you get there."

"Henry VII."

"This tweet from the BBC is crass and unnecessary. Do we really need silly innuendo about the race of the next Pope?"

"Sometimes you’ve got to do things that you don’t like, to boost yourself."

"Everyone has got their opinions about how things are going for them but this is a new era and it’s not always easy to maintain that level of success."

"Moan about it for a bit and then just move on."

"Queen of the silver bow! by thy pale beam, Alone and pensive, I delight to stray, And watch thy shadow trembling in the stream, Or mark the floating clouds that cross thy way. And while I gaze, thy mild and placid light Sheds a soft calm upon my troubled breast; And oft I think, fair planet of the night, That in thy orb the wretched may have rest; The sufferers of the earth perhaps may go, Released by death, to thy benignant sphere, And the sad children of despair and woe Forget in thee their cup of sorrow here, O that I soon may reach thy world serene, Poor wearied pilgrim in this toiling scene!"

"The garlands fade that Spring so lately wove, Each simple flower, which she had nurs’d in dew, Anemonies that spangled every grove, The primrose wan, and hare-bell, mildly blue. No more shall violets linger in the dell, Or purple orchis variegate the plain, Till Spring again shall call forth every bell, And dress with humid hands, her wreaths again. Ah! poor humanity! so frail, so fair, Are the fond visions of thy early day, Till tyrant passion, and corrosive care, Bid all thy fairy colours fade away! Another May new buds and flowers shall bring; Ah! why has happiness—no second spring?"

"Pressed by the moon, mute arbitress of tides, While the loud equinox its power combines, The sea no more its swelling surge confines, But o’er the shrinking land sublimely rides. The wild blast, rising from the western cave, Drives the huge billows from their heaving bed, Tears from their grassy tombs the village dead, And breaks the silent sabbath of the grave! With shells and sea-weed mingled, on the shore Lo! their bones whiten in the frequent wave; But vain to them the winds and waters rave; They hear the warring elements no more: While I am doomed—by life’s long storm oppressed, To gaze with envy on their gloomy rest."

"Oh! for imperial Polydamna’s art, Which to bright Helen was in Egypt taught, To mix with magic power the oblivious draught Of force to staunch the bleeding of the heart, And to Care’s wan and hollow cheek impart The smile of happy youth, uncursed with thought. Potent indeed the charm that could appease Affection’s ceaseless anguish, doomed to weep O’er the cold grave; or yield even transient ease By soothing busy Memory to sleep! —Around me those who surely must have tried Some charm of equal power, I daily see, But still to me Oblivion is denied, There’s no Nepenthe, now, on earth for me."

"My first TV job asked me shave my legs and I refused. The cameras all zoomed in on my leg hairs and the 40-strong male crew treated me to a rendition of "Gillette, the best a man can get". I unfortunately bumped into Jim Davidson in the corridor and he shouted "Not only has she got hairy legs, she's wearing men's shoes!” as he pointed at my Doc Martens."

"I was groped by my childhood hero. I watched soap operas religiously and loved one well-known soap star, but he touched me up during my first ever rep job. He stroked my bum in the canteen queue and went, "Mmm, nice arse." The next day, I saw him in the corridor and wanted to bolt. Instead, I grabbed his crotch, and said, "Mmm, nice bollocks." He never spoke to me again. Quite awkward because we were in a play together."

"[I]t shot this two-day rape scene with a young actress and then they cut it. [...] I was in favour of them never having that rape scene but the fact she had to go through that and then the director went: "Actually I have decided I will cut it", as if he was the big hero. This kind of thing has to stop. But unfortunately you look at Netflix and you see the amount of violence against women in a lot of shows and you see we still have a long way to go."

"June with her glancing grasses, June with a smiling sky, June, brown as the country lasses Or wings of the dragon-fly!The mown hay lies like sedges Or weed of the seashore strewn; Abrim with corn to the hedges The fields are filled in June."

"Sometimes the original may have to wait until there is a vessel to transfer it into."

"Love that fills the firmament with glory!— All the world knew this, but now I know it; Last have proved the eternal story And in song will shew it, All to gain, if you shall deign Me to be your poet.O divinest Heavenly Aphrodite, Here on earth incarnate I behold you, Lovelier, more serene and mighty Than my lips have told you, Far beyond my dreamings fond In my arms to fold you.You it was knew where the sweet flowers haunted; I could praise them found, but you could find them; I with studious art unvaunted Have in garlands twined them, And as due bring here to you On your brows to bind them.Take the worship, and with grace in guerdon Still for me new flower-abodes discover, That my song may keep its burden, There is nought above her; I, denied her breast, abide Her devoutest lover."

"As every physicist knows, Dirac was, in the words of Niels Bohr, "the strangest man of quantum mechanics" — someone deeply private, of very, very few words, rectilinear in thinking, virtually, apparently devoid of empathy with other human beings, always an outsider."

"... One of the most vocal skeptics is the Standard-Model pioneer Martin Veltman: 'String theory is mumbo jumbo. It has nothing to do with experiment.'... But is clear from the comments that Dirac repeatedly made in his lectures on the way theoretical physics should be done that he would have disagreed with those criticisms: he would have counselled string theorists to let the theory's beauty lead them by the hand, not to worry about the lack of experimental support and not be deterred if a few observations appear to refute it. But he would have cautioned string theorists to be modest, to keep an open mind and never to assume that they are within sight of the end of fundamental physics. If past experience is anything to go by, another revolution will eventually follow. Such was the advice of this extraordinarily unemotional man offered to his colleagues: be guided, above all, by your emotions."

"A physicist friend of mine once had a terrible spate of misfortune. Her flat was burgled, her cat was run over, and her grandfather died, all in the same week. Needing a bit of TLC, she went to see her professor, who offered three words of advice: “Do some physics.” For most people who are in need of consolation, I suspect physics is among the last things they would consider. , a former ' science editor, wants to persuade them that the branch of science so many people find soulless and intimating can offer much spiritual balm. He makes his case in what he calls a “love letter to physics”. ... For me, the main joy of physics is that it puts human beings so firmly in our place. Even if all of us – and every other living thing – died tomorrow, every quantum in the universe would carry on obliviously, doing its eternal, orderly dance to fundamental laws that we shall probably never discover. If you’re not a scientist, that thought may not be very consoling. But I’m just happy to keep on doing some physics."

"[On her divorce from (Sir) Terence Conran in 1962] I was 30. My mother said, "Well, perhaps it's as well your father's dead because otherwise you couldn't have got divorced." I gave her an astounded look, but that's how it was then."