Autobiographers From England

"At first I thought it was really funny, but the warning bells went off when I saw the first publicity poster for it. It was a picture of me with one of the minstrels and I'm wiping the black off his face and he's pretending to wipe the black off my face."

"The fine constitutional principles we have inherited from Magna Carta and parliament started off as the mere rhetorical perfume the barons doused themselves in to cover the stench of their own treachery. ... Fondness may be a more appropriate thing to feel about them than pride."

"Once a line of succession becomes open to different interpretations, it has ceased to function."

"I doubt religion is responsible for as much death as is claimed. Some people love to fight and steal and dominate – that's the key. There are arseholes among us and, given half a chance, they're going to start some sort of trouble out of ruthless self-interest or bloodlust or both. The prevailing ethos of any surrounding society is almost always that you're not supposed to kill people without a good reason, or at least some sort of reason. But the arseholes are clever, so they come up with reasons. To deeply religious societies, religious differences sound like a very convincing reason to kill people. But that doesn't mean the killing wouldn't have been happening anyway."

"Trusting the state doesn't make it more trustworthy."

"Dying was by far the most astute and successful thing King John did in his entire reign."

"Their certainty that they were right is worth remembering because it means there's probably stuff we're certain is right that future ages will correctly judge to be monstrous. The fact that everybody is convinced of something is no guarantee that it isn't evil horseshit."

"The world has never been fair, and cannot be made fair, and claims that it can are foolish or dishonest. It can be made fairer and attempts to make it less fair can be resisted. Optimistic realists seek improvement, not perfection."

"I got divorced. I've got friends who got divorced and they did not do stand up – good to know it's not obligatory, but I think you have to do something. Some people drink and some people sleep around, and I was like, "I'm going to tell some strangers how sad I am. But in a funny way"."

"[Asked if she was bullied at school] I was never punched. I think verbal abuse is potentially worse than being punched in the arm. I got called names every day. I got called Norma-No-Mates and Speccy-Four-Eyes."

"I always wanted to be able to say I pay my electricity bill by telling cock jokes."

"[Her] comedy depends on the cognitive dissonance between her appearance (primary school teacher in spectacles) and the filth she speaks."

"[Asked "End of weekend dread?"] Monday is our Saturday, so no dread. Having different days off to the majority of people is great in so many ways. And working Saturdays means you never have to go to a wedding."

"[Q:] What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? [A:] I'm always a bit late, but I don't mind that, because it means that whoever I'm meeting is already there. [Q:] What is the trait you most deplore in others? [A:] I hate it when people are later than me."

"I’ve tried hard…I don't know … my experience of my own dad and my own ex-husband possibly has some effect. I will remedy this. It is very unfair. I have tried harder, but I just can't quite get there yet."

"[Her mother stopped her daughter from wearing any jewelry. Wilson refers to a large rose quartz ring on her finger] I mean, isn't it pathetic when, even in your 70s, you wear things that a psychiatrist would point out is rebelling against your mother?"

"I can't think of a book where there's a woman born into a working-class background, who in her 70s is living a very comfortable, upper-middle-class sort of life; a woman who married at 19, had a baby at 21, was a policeman's wife for years, but whose marriage broke up in late middle age and who became very well known for a time. She then met a woman and became very happy with her. There isn't one!"

"It is strange…that sometimes people assume the worst of children if they come from poor families. I remember being astonished when I took my daughter to a party given by her schoolfriend’s parents. They lived in a lovely, big house very near the block of council flats where I grew up. The mother was very friendly to me, and said how pleased she was that our daughters were friends because obviously she could have nothing to do with ‘those dreadful scary rough children from the council flats’. I didn’t want to embarrass her by saying that I had once been one of those very children."

"I don't think that girls would ever have wanted a grey-haired, wrinkly writer as a role model if they were wanting to feel good about maybe being gay…I'm sure they could find much more glamorous examples."

"My mum would have loved Shirley Temple as a daughter – full of confidence, tap-dancing all over the place in flouncy clothes, and showing off. [She had] A girl sitting there reading a book, looking gormless."

"[Referring to Trish, her civil partner] I asked her about earlier girlfriends and she said she'd never had a year-after-year relationship, and I thought: "Right, I'm going to be that." And I have been, so far."

"[After reaching no. 7 in the best-seller lists] But a certain JK Rowling came along and you're never going to beat that. And there's always been one or two others much better than me. [Better or bigger?] Bigger! [laughs] Occasionally better."

"The thing is, the regime makes it very hard for people to be interested. If you are dedicated to finding out the truth, you can. There are ways to climb the firewall. You can buy banned books in Hong Kong and Taiwan. It is more… It is the risk associated with it that puts people off wanting to think about it."

"Wild Swans shows how life was different for each of the women – my grandmother, my mother, me. This book is also about very different lives, but because of political beliefs not generations. Big Sister [Soong Ai-ling] and Little Sister [Soong Mei-ling] were passionately anti-communist, whereas Red Sister [Soong Ching-ling] supported Mao. To start with, I didn’t want to write about the sisters; they were like fairytale [characters]. But while I was doing research, I realised how extraordinary they were, with all their mental agonies, moral dilemmas and heartbreaks."

"There’s no sense of heritage. Mao destroyed the culture and produced a generation of philistines who do not appreciate culture. Now, people are money-mad and property is the thing that makes money. The regime made a positive decision to channel people’s energy into money-making so they won’t be interested in politics."

"A large part. Woman rulers were always subject to condemnation. She never ruled in her own right and always had to be behind a screen. She ruled while the Emperor was a child but when the Emperor grew up she had to retire and go back to the Harem and the Emperor took over. It’s not immediately obvious which edicts came from her and which imperial decrees or ideas came from the Emperor so there is a prejudice but also a practical problem."

"I had always wanted to be a writer as a child but couldn’t spell out this dream to myself because during the Cultural Revolution all writers were condemned. To be a writer was the most dangerous profession. I wrote my first poem aged 16 and destroyed it."

"I went vegetarian when I was about… 8 years old. One day I cut this piece of meat open and blood came out of it, and I realized, I asked my mother, “Where did this come from?,” and she said, “From animals,” and that was it."

"I’ve grown up with animals in the house, I have 3 brothers and 3 sisters, and all of us had cats, dogs, mice, chickens, frogs, tortoises, so they’ve always been a big part of my life. My dog, Scamp, was my best friend when I was growing up, and he was just as much a brother to me as my human brothers. Someone threw acid on him, and he almost died, but my parents spent their life savings having him treated. It appalled me that people could be so cruel, and ever since I have stuck up for animals. It is something I can be active in, unlike trying to figure out the appalling things humans do to each other."

"Ronnie was so enthusiastic, and he could play instruments which Ozzy couldn't play, so it was easy to communicate with him, and for him to communicate musically with us. That enthusiasm gives us all a kick up the bum."

"In the hard rock and heavy metal world, Butler is a downright god. Known for his early use of the wah-wah pedal and down-tuning his instrument (which would become a favorite technique among grunge guitarists and bass players), Butler is one of the most celebrated bassists within the genre. Butler, who was also the primary lyricist in Black Sabbath, has been claimed by such greats as Steve Harris, Billy Sheehan, and Jason Newstead when it comes to posing as an influential figure. Butler’s performance on the Sabbath classic "Paranoid" holds the whole song together."

"As long as there is a possibility of working I'm not going to retire because if I retire nothing will work any more, and it's hard enough as it is. I'm very conscious that I'm in the minority in that I love what I do. How big is the number of people who are running to work to do a job that they like? And how lucky to be employed at it – how incredibly lucky."

"I think you’ve got to have your feet planted firmly on the ground, especially in this business, and you must not believe things that are said or written about you, because everything gets out of proportion one way or the other."

"He had a heart of gold, a great sense of humor and will be missed by the many people who loved him."

"I am devastated to learn of Roger Moore’s passing. The first leading role I ever had as a Bond girl was such a new and frightening world and Roger held my hand and guided me through every process. He taught me about work ethic and humility. He was so funny, kind and thoughtful to everyone around him and in that Roger taught me what a movie star really was and should be. Through his lifelong work with UNICEF he showed me the true meaning of being a humanitarian and giving back. He was my Bond."

"He embraced the role with an easy charm and grace that let us all in on the game. He saved the world seven times and then went on to become an even greater man working to ‘save the children’ with UNICEF. He never forgot the audience and we shall never forget him. I am proud to have followed in your footsteps Sir Roger."

"I played it slightly tongue-in-cheek because I never quite believed that James Bond was a spy because everybody knew him, they all knew what he drank. He’d walk into a bar and it would always be, "Ah, Commander Bond, martini, shaken not stirred." Spies are faceless people."

"I’ve been very fortunate and very lucky in life and I’d urge anyone to follow their hearts and find their true vocation. Life is so much more pleasant when you love going to work."

"I think Roger is the best Bond, of course – not just because of being my Bond, but because if you read the early Ian Fleming books describing him, that’s how he was, he was a bachelor, unattached, he was luxurious, sophisticated, and he was not available for females so no long term relationships there. I think Roger really portrayed that."

"I was very sad to hear of Roger’s passing. We had an unusually long relationship, by Hollywood standards, that was filled with jokes and laughter. I will miss him."

""Sport" hunting is a sickness, a perversion and a danger and should be recognised as such. People who get their "amusement" from hunting and killing defenceless animals can only be suffering from a mental disorder."

"Until we establish a felt sense of kinship between our own species and those fellow mortals who share with us the sun and shadow of life on this agonized planet, there is no hope for other species, there is no hope for the environment, and there is no hope for ourselves."

"This anthology proves that there is nothing new about the realization of the connection between our treatment of non-humans and of each other. Clear minds down the centuries have seen that the violence man shows to man is inextricably linked to the violence we have inflicted upon other species and our shared environment."

"So far from vegetarianism springing from the anthropomorphism of predominantly urban dwellers, as has been suggested by its more superficial critics, it and its inevitable successor veganism are increasingly being recognised as a logical, even inescapable, process, essentially relevant, essentially practical, essentially compassionate to all species."

"I struggle to write the next paragraph but [Janet] Smith, in her section 5: 262, records what happened with the pellucid neutrality of legal prose: He said “hello” to everyone except [Saville’s victim, legally codenamed] C23. Then he stood beside her, grabbed her round the waist with his right hand, put his legs round her left thigh (so that her leg was between his two legs) and rubbed his crotch up and down. So far as C23 can remember, he did not say anything. She felt that he was giving a performance. Fortunately Mr Lawson saw what was happening, came over and distracted Savile, then positioned himself between Savile and C23. The interview took place. There is one detail Smith omits for the proper reason that it is experienced by a witness not a victim. When I block Savile, he is furious, thwarted. His strength is extraordinary for a man four months away from 80 but I have enough height and heft to hold him off, though not without briefly feeling his erection against my leg. (Many have suggested that his favoured baggy leisure wear was doubly calculated for easy removal and to advertise his arousal to his prey without doubt.) Let me be clear that this experience is nothing at all compared to the impacts on his victims, but it is a weird memory to have and gives me some tiny insight into the suffering he inflicted."

"Although already well advanced on becoming one of history’s most prolific criminal sex offenders, Savile shows a peculiar proclivity for public near-confession. In his book God’ll Fix It, he admits to being “an abuser of things and bodies and people”, a formula that can in retrospect allude to both sexual abuse and necrophilia (“bodies” and “people” are oddly differentiated). Elsewhere in God’ll Fix It, he repeats his regular hope (also expressed in many interviews) that his good works will provide enough “on the credit side” for God Almighty to overlook the “debit side”. As he boasts that the black lines in the ledger add up to tens of millions of charitable donations, he is effectively confessing that the red entries have nearly equal value. How much bad would you need to do to require so much good? At the time, it never occurs to us his accounting is absolutely precise."

"I drive up to Woodlands Cemetery and work out from newspaper photos where Savile’s grave must be. His headstone – a vast granite triptych with the inscription It Was Good While It Lasted, a DJ’s last glib jingle – was pulverised at midnight two years before, its fragments used for landfill. Someone appears to have laid a single flower on the grassy knoll, unless the wind filched a tribute from an undisgraced grave. A tag with the council logo is tied on the fence behind, in line with the mound. Is that so they know where he is in case of exhumation or removal? Others seem to be following this ghoulish route; a group arrive as I leave. There is a sense of not being able to believe the scale of the fall until seeing what was an extravagant shrine (to a man called “a saint” in BBC coverage) but is now just scruffy lawn."

"As a nation at that time we held Savile in our affection as a somewhat eccentric national treasure with a strong commitment to charitable causes. [...] Today's reports show that in reality he was a sickening and prolific sexual abuser who repeatedly exploited the trust of a nation for his own vile purposes."

"Savile was a callous, opportunistic, wicked predator who abused and raped individuals, many of them patients and young people, who expected and had a right to expect to be safe. His actions span five decades – from the 1960s to 2010."

"Savile was a highly unusual personality whose lifestyle, behaviour and offending patterns were equally unusual. As a result of his celebrity, his volunteering, and his fundraising he had exceptional access to a number of NHS hospitals and took the opportunities that that access gave him to abuse patients, staff and others on a remarkable scale. Savile's celebrity and his roles as a volunteer and fundraiser also gave him power and influence within NHS hospitals which meant that his behaviour, which was often evidently inappropriate, was not challenged as it should have been. Savile's ability to continue to pursue his activities without effective challenge was aided by fragmented hospital management arrangements; social attitudes of the times, including reticence in reporting and accepting reports of sexual harassment and abuse, and greater deference than today towards those in positions of influence and power; and less bold and intrusive media reporting. While it might be tempting to dismiss the Savile case as wholly exceptional, a unique result of a perfect storm of circumstances, the evidence we have gathered indicates that there are many elements of the Savile story that could be repeated in the future. There is always a risk of the abuse, including sexual abuse, of people in hospitals. There will always be people who seek to gain undue influence and power within public institutions including in hospitals. And society and individuals continue to have a weakness for celebrities. Hospital organisations need to be aware of the risks posed by these matters and manage them appropriately."