English Quotes

It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.

Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.

Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop.

Twinkle, twinkle little bat How I wonder what you're at! Up above the world you fly, Like a tea-tray in the sky.

She generally gave herself very good advice, (though she very seldom followed it).

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.'

Contrariwise, if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.

'The time has come,' the walrus said, 'to talk of many things: of shoes and ships - and sealing wax - of cabbages and kings.'

If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.

Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

There are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents, and only one for birthday presents, you know.

'But I don't want to go among mad people,' said Alice. 'Oh, you can't help that,' said the cat. 'We're all mad here.'

One of the secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others.

I can't go back to yesterday - because I was a different person then.

I do believe very much in movie as a one-man-show. I think that where I've watched movie go wrong, it's usually because the dread committee has been interfering with it.

I am still making order out of chaos by reinvention.

Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes.

For better or worse, I've been involved in the description of political conflict.

Fools, most linguists. Damn all to say in one language, so they learn another and say damn all in that.

Every writer knows he is spurious; every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic.

During the Cold War, we lived in coded times when it wasn't easy and there were shades of grey and ambiguity.

Completing a book, it's a little like having a baby.

By the age of 9 or 10, I knew that I had to cut my own cloth and make my own way.

But there is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state.

But I think the real tension lies in the relationship between what you might call the pursuer and his quarry, whether it's the writer or the spy.

Americans believe that if you know something, you should do something about it.

America has entered one of its periods of historic madness, but this is the worst I can remember.

The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous. But neither, in my experience, do we ever reach a plane of detachment regarding our parents, however wise and old we may become. To pretend otherwise is to cheat.

The longing we have to communicate cleanly and directly with people is always obstructed by qualifications and often with concern about how our messages will be received.

Most people like to read about intrigue and spies. I hope to provide a metaphor for the average reader's daily life. Most of us live in a slightly conspiratorial relationship with our employer and perhaps with our marriage.