People From London

"We don't want to fight but, by Jingo, if we do, We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too We've fought the Bear before and while we're Britons true The Russians shall not have Constantinople."

"It would have been disaster if we hadn't been so desperately in love with each other."

"I believe you should never give people what they want. Give them something a little more than what they want and that way they grow up."

"On combatting the inequalities in the system, as quoted by My london, , October 28, 2020."

"When you exclude a child, you are essentially saying they're not good enough for society. A lot of my peers who have been excluded ended up in prison or dead."

"On the effects of school exclusions as spoken on ITV News london, , October 25, 2019."

"I want to speak up about representation in the industry because it is important. My experience has been hard coming up. I was naive and didn't know about the systemic stuff that still continues today and having experienced it, I know there's a need for change and I want to be a voice for that."

"Faith has enabled me to survive in this business: faith in God through Christ Jesus. I trust in him that he has a purpose regarding my life and career, and he knows what is best for me. I also need to have faith in myself, my abilities, my value. I have business skill-sets to help me create my own work. I no longer want to just survive, but thrive. I’m also trying to help other people who come from where I come from."

"I want to tell stories that reflect people from all walks of life."

"When I was younger, I used to dress up as police officers and firefighters, and on other occasions would imitate Bob Marley and Michael Jackson, who were both musical inspirations of mine."

"On growing up, as quoted by The Jamaica Gleaner, , October 30, 2021."

"After a musical on the stage has been running a little while it can be quite painful watching. The singers get out of tune, the timpanist can come in halfway through the second act and fall over the gong."

"You have people like Marcus Rashford who is part of our generation. He's seen a need and is using his voice. A lot of us are rising up to create change for ourselves.""

"The film has to tell the composer what it need, then it's in the lap of the gods, isn't it, as to whether others think it works or not."

"As a black woman I feel a responsibility to black people and to women. My responsibility is not to be compromising. Even if the content is not positively biased or doesn’t fall in line with an agenda or ideology, I want people to be satisfied by the honesty."

"Margaret Thatcher used to say: "I can't win an election and survive politically without bending over to the power of the press." Well, look what's happening now: the "leave" Brexit campaign has been a media maniac affair. Media is an occult power in our so-called civilized, enlightened society."

"Politics is stressful, it's scary, tiresome. Acting is like a breath of fresh air. They're both fictional kind of creativity: politicians are bad actors."

"It was the same approach as the first one, which was just to make sure that it was as crap as we wanted it to be. The key is to stop the stunt coordinator from coming in to make it look like a film fight. We just wanted it to be two pathetic Englishmen scared of each other, throwing their handbags at each other, basically. (on his screen fight with Colin Firth in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004))"

"In the last couple of weeks I have seen the ads for the Wonder Bra. Is that really a problem in this country? Men not paying enough attention to women’s breasts?"

"It's devastating news... A promise has been broken, we upheld our side of this deal and sadly the government are choosing to go back on their word... we feel it’s really important to be transparent with the public and with our donors specifically about where their money is going.... We need to be honest about it, and it's so important that public trust is there... It is a time-sensitive project and it would be an utter tragedy if one child was trafficked ...But we know that actually it will be thousands"

"Variety magazine’s first review of Promising Young Woman, a black comedy in which Mulligan plays Cassie, a woman who fools men into believing she is too drunk to give consent for sex, read: “Mulligan, a fine actress, seems a bit of an odd choice as this admittedly many-layered apparent femme fatale – Margot Robbie is a producer here, and one can (perhaps too easily) imagine the role might once have been intended for her. Whereas with this star, Cassie wears her pickup-bait gear like bad drag; even her long blonde hair seems a put-on.” ...Mulligan first took issue with the article in an interview with the New York Times in December, after which Variety updated its review with an editor’s note, which reads: “Variety sincerely apologises to Carey Mulligan and regrets the insensitive language and insinuation in our review of Promising Young Woman that minimised her daring performance.” Harvey’s original point remains in the text. The response from critics has largely sided with Mulligan... thrown him under the bus.”"

"Watching Cassie regain this power over these odious men is a deliciously giddy thrill... Scenes like Cassie tearing apart a college dean for her inability to protect and believe women or her surprisingly charming romance with a guy who might not be as toxic as the rest of them, there’s a lot here to recommend... First and foremost is Mulligan who is sensationally good as Cassie, showing hitherto unseen comic abilities, the kind of performance that never relents, it just builds and builds until finally it explodes. She’s always been good but never this flooring and with her headlining almost every scene, the film is forever compelling as a result as it’s impossible to drag your eyes away from her, curious to know just what she’ll do next. There’s also a magnetic turn from Bo Burnham as her love interest and the pair have genuine chemistry, enough to fill an entirely separate romantic comedy."

"Sarah Gavron, who directed ‘Suffragette’ says, “She works very hard and takes life very seriously. … I’ve heard people say that she’s wise beyond her years, and there is something about that I think right.”...When she was younger, Mulligan recalls, she had “visceral dreams” about being in films with Judi Dench. Then, when she landed a small part in her first film, 2005’s “Pride & Prejudice,” Dench was her co-star."

"If Carey Mulligan reaches the Oscar podium on April 25 with her by turns thrilling and devastating lead performance in Emerald Fennell’s subversive feature debut Promising Young Woman, her win would cement her status as one of the most consistently brilliant actors in the industry today. Over the past 16 years, the 35-year-old Londoner has worked with quiet precision, bringing depth, complexity and intelligence to every part she takes on. While she’s still best known for playing strong-willed heroines in lyrical period dramas, it’s her contemporary roles... that are a true testament to her talent."

"I don’t want people... to form an attachment to me or my personality or my family or my life because that’s not healthy... When I started working, I was often the only girl in a roomful of men... I’d either try to please people by being lovely and sweet all the time — being polite and nice and getting the job done — or going in quite lad-ish and acting tough. Making ‘Suffragette’ made me realize I don’t have to do either of those things. I can be a woman... confident in my ideas... and I can get my voice heard without having to manipulate the situation."

"What I really love about the (Suffragette) film is that (her character) has a little boy and she doesn't have a girl... Because she has a son, it's sort of reflecting the idea that this fight isn't for women... It's for human rights and equality and that serves men as well as women and that was something watching the film and talking about the film now is really important: That feminism isn't just for girls. It's something that is everyone's issue."

"The thing about awards season that gives it value is celebrating film, obviously, but also highlighting films that might not otherwise have had an audience. When I read the Promising Young Woman script, I felt... I had to do it... My favourite way of working is having really long conversations with the director. When that relationship is solid, and you can talk for hours and figure this person out, and do that to a degree with the other actors, it feels like such a human thing... I have not had to experience what Cassie has gone through in this film and I wanted to make sure that it felt accurate, so that it didn’t sit wrong with people who’ve got real pain... I would never ask someone to relive something terrible for the sake of a film... the truth is that this situation is so common and what happens in the film is such a sad reality. You want it to be really clear about that. [During the pandemic] I haven’t worked much. I did a few audiobooks... A Matt Haig book called The Midnight Library and a kids’ book called The Worst Warlock, which was really fun, with trolls and wizards. And the EM Forster short story The Machine Stops. Published in 1909, it’s about an apocalyptic society where everyone lives in their own bubble and nobody has any human contact and everyone communicates through what are essentially iPads. It’s just nuts."

"I think in criticising or bemoaning a lack of attractiveness on my part in a character, it wasn’t a personal slight. It didn’t wound my ego, but it made me concerned that in such a big publication an actress’s appearance could be criticised and it could be accepted as completely reasonable criticism. I feel it’s important that criticism is constructive. I think it’s important that we are looking at the right things when it comes to work, and we’re looking at the art and we’re looking at the performance... It’s important to call out those things, because they seem small and they seem insignificant... People around me at the time said, ‘Oh, get over it. People love the film.’ But it stuck with me, because I think it’s these kind of everyday moments that add up.... We start to edit the way that women appear on-screen, and we want them to look a certain way. We want to airbrush them, and we want to make them look perfect. Or we want to edit the way that they work, the way they move and the way that they think and behave. And I think we need to see real women portrayed on-screen in all of their complexity. I felt that it was one small thing to point out that could be helpful.... I was really sort of surprised and thrilled and happy to have received an apology... I kind of found it moving, in a way – to draw a line and know that had an impact. (speaking about Variety magazine’s first review of Promising Young Woman, a black comedy in which Mulligan plays Cassie)"

"I think every country has to work out its own model because the old global consensus is over."

"There are two solutions to unemployment, one is a job and the other is entrepreneurship...We need to increase 'made in Nigeria'. Even me. We all need to buy 'made in Nigeria'! Eat 'made in Nigeria'! Drink 'made in Nigeria'!"

"If you keep on working and you don't tell people what you are doing, they lose confidence."

"If we just feed ourselves rather than import foods, we will create jobs! We will create wealth!"

"The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) is doing a great job in this regard already. It is all about data and bringing people and companies into the formal sector. Firms that operate under the radar can easily avoid tax. The government is doing basic things to expedite this process, such as scanning all business cards we receive and sending them to FIRS. If a company comes looking for payment from the government to implement a project, we check them before any money is released. At the beginning of the administration’s term, we found that some firms, such as fuel marketers, were receiving subsidies from the government but were not registered for tax. By increasing the flow of information and following up on such cases, we will quickly expand the tax base."

"Public service is hard work, not about seeking glory."

"when you add the enabling infrastructure, the work being done on ease of doing business with the natural talent and entrepreneurism of our people, it is easy to become very optimistic about our long term future."

"We are all disciples of the same Master in the same mission. With the White Father community in Ghardaïa, I hope to find spiritual and fraternal support in line with our White Father Charism, which is deeply rooted in my heart without for all that interfering in what is proper to them. I admit that living alone outside community will be a sacrifice for me, being the White Father that I am."

"There is no theory of economics that suggests that an economy can grow doing what we have been doing."

"When there are no limits and boundaries on the application of public funds, an economy cannot grow."

"Investing in infrastructure is key. If we can create a revenue base outside oil, we will be less exposed to the volatility of crude prices."

"When you allow people to steal brazenly, there is no text book theory needed to tell you there is a need to enhance controls and reporting or you will have problems."

"I am a composer. I am not a songwriter. Because the musical world has been so massively hijacked by big business we tend to see the single pop song as the all-important unit. But there is so much more to music than that, and while I have always taken a wide interest in every sort of music whatever its origins, the wonderful possibilities of extended music, of concertos and symphonies and opera and ballet and film and instrumental music in all its myriad forms - this is what I am interested in and what I both listen to and continually attempt to create."

"Nothing else much matters once you have achieved the hardest thing, which is to act out of conviction. Even if you have been beaten by evil, in the bitterness of defeat the battle has left a trace for the others, and you can go feeling clean. I recognise that I am a minor writer; but this does not affect the depth of my convictions."

"The bore is the human cuckoo. He will take over anything, usurp any nest. His one outstanding feature is that he has no features. He has nothing whatever to offer society, not the least germ of an original or positive idea – and yet the rest of us somehow find ourselves moving up to make room for him, just as the body makes itself host to a destructive virus. Bores would take the entire world over if they could; sometimes they do. Here is an extract from the diary of one who did: 'I still lack to a considerable degree that naturally superior kind of manner that I would dearly like to possess…' (Heinrich Himmler, November 1921)."

"'You're not very good at it, are you?' said Gust, 'they ought to have sent heavies in.' He thought the man very likely could have got a job playing Hess in this new TV series they were doing on the war, and he would have had a word with a few directors he knew in Soho if he had been a mate of his. But, as he wasn't, Gust kicked him in the stomach as he tried to drag himself up on one leg with the help of the bar-rail, then turned back to the other man. 'You all right?' he said. 'How are you feeling now? Chipper?' He took one of the man's ears in his thumb and forefinger; the ear was tiny, considering the size of his head, and it had little hairs inside it. Gust picked up a cocktail stick out of a dirty glass on the bar and jabbed it down into the eardrum as far as he could; when he pulled it out the stick was half-way red, and there was some grey stuff in it as well. He shouted down his ear: 'I think I just broke your foot!' but the man wasn't making sense any more; he was wailing with his hand clapped to the side of his head, swaying up and down from the waist like a bereaved widow, or else perhaps he just didn't hear, or maybe the music was too loud. Gust realised then that he had pushed the stick in too far and that the man would probably die. Dirty cocktail-stick in the brain? What a bleeding way to go! Now the man with the broken leg tried another naughty stroke; although he only had one hand free because he was using the other one to hold onto the rail, he still managed to smash a glass and try putting it in Gust's face. 'This is just self-defence after all,' Gust said to himself. He stamped on the man's feet again; this time he definitely felt bones go and the man screamed, dropped the glass and let go of the rail; but instead of letting him fall Gust took him round the waist, ripped his fly open and searched inside his pants until he found his testicles, which he yanked right out into his hand. Their owner can't have been much into baths because they smelled like something tepid from a canteen counter. Gust wrung them like the devil having a go at a set of wedding bells with all the grip he had, until the man was shrieking on the same D minor as the music. 'It's nothing personal,' said Gust, 'but I'm afraid you're going to have to learn to fuck all over again.' He wiped the blood off the man's prick down his face, then pulled the face towards him and drove his nose into his brain with his head. The music boosted into E major on a key change, and the man doubled up under a bar-stool, leaving a lot of blood behind him while Gust receded into the half darkness towards the black drapes on the walls."

"Existence is sometimes what a forward artillery observer sees of enemy lines through field glasses. A distant and troubling view brought suddenly into focus with a wealth of obscene detail."

"By the word existence I mean the one contract valid for mankind; I define it as the general contract. In it are the clauses of human life; its uses, responsibilities, limitations, its inevitable eclipse. This contract is the basis of the black novel, whose loathing of violence, which it describes as precisely as possible in order to remind people how disgusting it is, causes it to rise up against death forced on any person before his time, and that is where it becomes a novel in mourning. Each contract is to be terminated in the way that its clauses are set out; but it is not to be destroyed by any contract-holder. That possibility is contained in no contract. To break his contract is either to invite the breaker's destruction, or else it is evidence that the act of destruction has been carried out by a signatory who has already been destroyed, such as a killer — and that is why my detective picks up Suarez' battered head and kisses it. I will go further. What is remarkable about I Was Dora Suarez has nothing to do with literature at all; what is remarkable about it is that in its own way and by its own route it struggles after the same message as Christ. I am not the kind of person that anyone would expect to say such a thing, for although I believe firmly in the invisible, I am not religious. But in writing the book I definitely underwent an experience that I can only describe as cathartic; the writing of Suarez, though plunging me into evil, became the cause of my seeking to purge what was evil in myself. It was only after I had finished the book that I realised this; I was far too deeply involved in the battle with evil that the book became to think any further than that at the time [...] Suarez was my atonement for fifty years' indifference to the miserable state of this world; it was a terrible journey through my own guilt, and through the guilt of others."

"The black novel seeks to present as forcibly as it can the terminal psychic situation that occurs in people who have arrived at a point where they have no hope, no motive, and no longer even the desire to conceal anything from themselves; the black novel intervenes at the moment where a human being approaches his last moment: The first night of death must seem so strange. A special mood is necessary to make language plastic enough to convey such experience exactly; experience so devastatingly simple that, like love, it verges on the indescribable. Nearly every attempt to convey it can really only be described as another in a seemingly endless series of attempts since we cannot describe what we are not yet in a position to know — and yet it is the black novel's absolute duty to express it. T. S. Eliot, I think, got closest to describing the nature of this challenge when he wrote (I paraphrase): It is not necessary to die to describe death."

"It seems to me that no matter whether you marry, settle down or live with a bird or not, certain ones simply have your number on them, like bombs in the war; and even if you don't happen to like them all that much there's nothing you can do about it – unless you're prepared to spend a lifetime arguing fate out of existence, which you could probably do if you tried but I'm not the type."

"Then we sat in silence, watching the scenery whirring past us in the improving light. I was lighting us both a cigarette when he turned to me and said: 'Sorry if I got cross, morrie.' 'That's all right,' I said. 'Bit on edge, I suppose.' It was all very kosher and British. 'Not surprising,' I said. 'It's been an angstful sort of night.'"

"If there be an object truly ridiculous in nature, it is an American patriot, signing resolutions of independency with the one hand, and with the other brandishing a whip over his affrighted slaves."