English Quotes

Theatre is about people, not buildings. Incalculable damage has been done to the expert talent a company needs - from wardrobe to lighting technicians.

Shakespeare reveals human nature brilliantly: he shines a light on our instinctive desire to dominate each other.

People come to the theatre to be excited and uplifted - I want to inspire my audience.

Oh, come off it, I've only directed three plays for the RSC.

Normally, an actress has to work to bring out her male side. In our case, the dynamic is reversed. The actor playing her modelled himself on Sharon Stone.

It's amazing. I can't believe how brilliant the whole thing is - my daughter, Georgia, is just wonderful.

I'd love to do some new plays.

I was a terrible actor. The analytical part of my mind never quite let go.

I wanted to make the violence beautiful in order to heighten our revulsion.

Each organism, no matter how simple or complex, has around it a sacred bubble of space, a bit of mobile territoriality which only a few other organisms are allowed to penetrate and then only for short periods of time.

I hate getting bored.

Yet God is so one that He admits of distinction, and so admits of distinction that He still remains unity.

As he is one, so we call Him God, the Deity, the Divine Nature, and other names of the same signification.

The Almighty gave us our lives, and I suppose He meant us to defend them, at least I have always acted on that, and I hope it will not be brought up against me when my clock strikes.

Many children's writers don't have children of their own.

Jane Austen was writing about boring people with desperately limited lives. We forget this because we've seen too many of her books on screen.

If one book's done this well, you want to write another one that does just as well. There's that horror of the second novel that doesn't match up.

If kids like a picture book, they're going to read it at least 50 times. Read anything that often, and even minor imperfections start to feel like gravel in the bed.

I've written 16 children's books and five unpublished novels. Some of the latter were breathtakingly bad.

I've worked in television long enough to know that when you stop enjoying that type of thing you go home and do something else.

I was born too late for steam trains and a lazy eye meant I'd never be an astronaut.

I think the U.K. is too small to write about from within it and still make it seem foreign and exotic and interesting.

I think most writers feel like they're on the outside looking in much of the time. All of us feel, to a certain extent, alienated from the stuff going on around us.

I started writing books for children because I could illustrate them myself and because, in my innocence, I thought they'd be easier.

I knew there was a story; once you find a dog with a fork through it, you know there's a story there.

I don't mean that literary fiction is better than genre fiction, On the contrary; novels can perform two functions and most perform only one.

I better make the plot good. I wanted to make it grip people on the first page and have a big turning point in the middle, as there is, and construct the whole thing like a roller coaster ride.

Children simply don't make the distinction; a book is either good or bad. And some of the books they think are good are very, very bad indeed.

Bore children, and they stop reading. There's no room for self-indulgence or showing off or setting the scene.

B is for bestseller.