Quotes by Broadcasters - Page 4

Living in New York is like being at some terrible late-night party. You're tired you've had a headache since you arrived but you can't leave because then you'd miss the party.
Simon Hoggart
It would be wrong to kill oneself if one did not know exactly the nature of one's eyes.
Kate Williams
These days, however, I am much calmer - since I realised that it’s technically impossible for a woman to argue against feminism. Without feminism, you wouldn’t be allowed to have a debate on women’s place in society. You’d be too busy giving birth on the kitchen floor - biting down on a wooden spoon, so as not to disturb the men’s card game - before going back to quick-liming the dunny. This is why those female columnists in the Daily Mail - giving daily wail against feminism - amuse me. They paid you £1,600 for that, dear, I think. And I bet it’s going in your bank account, and not your husband’s. The more women argue loudly, against feminism, the more they both prove it exists and that they enjoy its hard-won privileges.
Caitlin Moran
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.
Edward R. Murrow
you know, a daydream properly utilized can be the most powerful force in the universe. One need only dream of freedom to begin to break the spell of enslavement.
William Joyce
Life is really the only place you can learn the most important lessons about how to get dressed and to be happy.
Caitlin Moran
I am the prince of procrastination. It is my besetting sin. I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do - the day after
Gyles Brandreth
You wanted to become a doctor to help people and feel better at the end of your job, I think, watching them, as the nurse takes my hand. But I don't think you do feel better at the end of the day. You look like humans have constantly disappointed you.
Caitlin Moran
I have a rule of thumb that allows me to judge, when times is pressing and one needs to make a snap judgment, whether or not some sexist bullshit is afoot. Obviously, it’s not 100% infallible but by and large it definitely points you in the right direction and it's asking this question; are the men doing it? Are the men worrying about this as well? Is this taking up the men’s time? Are the men told not to do this, as it's letting the side down? Are the men having to write bloody books about this exasperating retarded, time-wasting, bullshit? Is this making Jeremy Clarkson feel insecure?Almost always the answer is no. The boys are not being told they have to be a certain way, they are just getting on with stuff.
Caitlin Moran
But deciding not to have children is a very, very hard decision for a woman to make: the atmosphere is worryingly inconducive to saying, "I choose not to," or "it all sounds a bit vile, tbh." We call these women "selfish" The inference of the word "childless" is negative: one of lack, and loss. We think of nonmothers as rangy lone wolves--rattling around, as dangerous as teenage boys or men. We make women feel that their narrative has ground to a halt in their thirities if they don't "finish things" properly and have children.
Caitlin Moran
And that was the point I knew I just loved this filthy, ugly, loquacious man in a fur coat, who would spend the day roaming all over town, looking for bright lights, and laughter - and then at night come on stage, and unbutton two buttons on his waistcoat, with his clumsy, fat fingers, and show you his heart beneath.
Caitlin Moran
I swiftly discovered that there are few things in DIY (and possibly life) that can't be solved with a large mallet, a bag of ten-centimetre nails and some swearing.
Monty Halls
Strange how it is that men never act crueler than when they're fighting for the sake of an idea. We've been killing since Cain over who stands closer to god. It seems to me that cruelty is just in the way of things. You drive yourself mad if you take it all personal. Those who hurt you don't have the power over you they would like. That's why they do what they do.
Marcel Theroux
I have read more about Oprah Winfrey’s ass than I have about the rise of China as an economic superpower. I fear this is no exaggeration. Perhaps China is rising as an economic superpower because its women aren’t spending all their time reading about Oprah Winfrey’s ass.
Caitlin Moran
To survive the day is triumph enough for the walking wounded among the great many of us.
Studs Terkel
Modern life is, for most of us, a kind of serfdom to mortgage, job and the constant assault to consume. Although we have more time and money than ever before, most of us have little sense of control over our own lives. It is all connected to the apathy that means fewer and fewer people vote. Politicians don’t listen to us anyway. Big business has all the power; religious extremism all the fear. But in the garden or allotment we are king or queen. It is our piece of outdoors that lays a real stake to the planet.
Monty Don
A shabby looking old man was walking their way. It must be a relative of one of the men, wandering in the wrong direction as they often did. Where were they going to put this one? He was wearing a pulled-down hat and he had a long beard. He was weaving towards her, his feet tripping unsteadily.Even though she could not see his face, there was something oddly familiar about him. She stared hard, trying to make it out. He put up his hand and waved. She stared again. "That's your father," said Tom.
Kate Williams
In the street below, a posh-looking drunk man is reading the card of a prostitute, Blue-Tacked up by a doorbell. He’s examining it with all the forensic care I presume he puts into reading a wine list.‘What are you looking for?’ I ask him, in my head. ‘What woman will go best with your main course of terrible, horny loneliness?’I speculate, briefly, on how different the world would be if it were run by women. In that world, if you were a lonely, horny woman – as I am. As I always am – you’d see Blu-tacked postcards by Soho doorways that read, ‘Nice man in cardigan, 24, will talk to you about The Smiths whilst making you cheese-on-toast + come to parties with you. Apply within.
Caitlin Moran
If you don't know the exact moment when the lights will go out, you might as well read until they do.
Clive James
But women living in fear of aging, and pulling painful and expensive tricks to hide it from the world, does not say something amazing about us as humans.
Caitlin Moran
Just resolve to shine, constantly and steadily, like a warm lamp in the corner, and people will want to move towards you in order to feel happy, and to read things more clearly. You will be bright and constant in a world of dark and flux, and this will save you the anxiety of other, ultimately less satisfying things like ‘being cool’, ‘being more successful than everyone else’ and ‘being very thin’.
Caitlin Moran
Two women at the same event wearing the same outfit is a disaster. But two women at the same event singing the same song is a party. And two women at the same event talking about Doris from Fame is a friendship for life. Fill yourself with words, choruses, and heroes, like you're supposed to fill your wardrobe with shoes, brooches, and belts.
Caitlin Moran
Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources
C.E.M. Joad
...the government in Beijing continues to define itself as Marxist-Leninist, though 'Market-Leninist' would be rather more apt.
Francis Wheen
The people around you are mirrors, I think. You see yourself reflected in their eyes. If the mirror is true, and smooth, you see your true self. That’s how you learn who you are.
Caitlin Moran
God is a pure mathematician!' declared British astronomer Sir James Jeans. The physical Universe does seem to be organised around elegant mathematical relationships. And one number above all others has exercised an enduring fascination for physicists: 137.0359991.... It is known as the fine-structure constant and is denoted by the Greek letter alpha (α).
Paul Davies
If you really want space on public transport you should carry some pornography from the 1970s and a pair of children's safety scissors, then delicately cut out all the eyes of the glamour models whilst whistling. Every now and again mutter, 'Why are women more beautiful when they are eyeless?' You will be able to stretch out, though this can have ramifications such as ending up on a police list or being run out of town.
Robin Ince
It's a kind of heresy to say so, but I think our race has made forms more beautiful than what was here before us. Sometimes god's handiwork is crude. There is no more ugly thing than a lobster. There's not much pretty about a caribou. It has an ungainly walk and its touchhole voids droppings when it strains in harness. Was there a straight line on earth before we drew one?
Marcel Theroux
He was bright, bright, bright, like a lantern above a pub door in November- he made you want to come in and never leave.
Caitlin Moran
Not one had ever passed judgement on my cheap handbag to my face. But then, this is a reserved country.
Caitlin Moran
I used to fear their deaths--the car! the dog! the sea! the germ!--until I realized it need never be a problem: on the trolley, on the way to the mortuary, I would put my hands into their ribs and take their hearts and swallow them, and give birth to them again, so that they would never, ever end.
Caitlin Moran
I've told you, there's no point keeping those. They're not tax-deductible,' my dad thundered.'I think you'll find they are,' raged my mum like some sort of feral animal (a badger with TB perhaps).'They're not. You only get VAT back on lunches outside of a 50-mile radius from your place of residence. You effing bitch,' he seemed to add, with his eyes, I imagined.
Alan Partridge
And - just as with winning the lottery, or becoming famous - there is no manual for becoming a woman, even though the stakes are so high. God knows, when I was 13, I tried to find one. You can read about other people's experience on the matter - by way of trying to crib, in advance, for an exam - but I found that this is, in itself, problematic. For throughout history, you can read stories of women who - against all odds - got being a woman right, but ended up being compromised, unhappy, hobbled or ruined, because all around them, society was still wrong. Show a girl a pioneering hero - Sylvia Plath, Dorothy Parker, Frida Kahlo, Cleopatra, Boudicca, Joan of Arc - and you also, more often than not, show a girl a woman who was eventually crushed. Your hard-won triumphs can be wholly negated if you live in a climate where your victories are seen as threatening, incorrect, distasteful, or - most crucially of all, for a teenage girl - simply uncool. Few girls would choose to be right - right, down into their clever, brilliant bones - but lonely.
Caitlin Moran
I don't understand, then, why, in the midst of all this, pregnant women - women trying to make rational decisions about their futures and, usually, that of their families, too - should be subject to more pressure about preserving life than, say, Vladimir Putin, the World Bank, or the Catholic Church.
Caitlin Moran
There is more to the human mind than its evolutionary heritage.
Kenan Malik
Why should we look to the past in order to prepare for the future? Because there is nowhere else to look.
James Burke
Perhaps there are many "nows" of varying duration, depending on just what it is we are doing. We must face up to the fact that, at least in the case of humans, the subject experiencing subjective time is not a perfect, structureless observer, but a complex, multilayered, multifaceted psyche. Different levels of our consciousness may experience time in quite different ways. This is evidently the case in terms of response time. You have probably had the slightly unnerving experience of jumping at the sound of a telephone a moment or two before you actually hear it ring. The shrill noise induces a reflex response through the nervous system much faster than the time it takes to create the conscious experience of the sound.It is fashionable to attribute certain qualities, such as speech ability, to the left side of the brain, whereas others, such as musical appreciation, belong to processes occurring on the right side. But why should both hemispheres experience a common time? And why should the subconscious use the same mental clock as the conscious?
Paul Davies
And you know what the worst thing was?The worst thing was that nobody ever believed how hard we tried.
Jack McCarthy
Look at this charming donkey!
Kenneth Clark
But in Ward 9 the air had a real quality, it clamped itself over your face like a pad of cotton wool, soaked through with the sweet chloroform of utter sadness. - Ward 9
Will Self
Well let's face it, who on earth besides antique dealers and gay couples actually still give dinner parties?
Nigel Slater
Apocalyptic saucer cults have started to spring up all over America. One small group, which has been receiving messages from outer space via Lake City housewife Mrs. Marian Keech, becomes the subject of a research team led by psychologist Leon Festinger. According to an alien entity named Sananda, the end of the world is due any day and under the most cataclysmic of circumstances. The group meets regularly to discuss the latest predictions from Sananda and the rest of the Space Brothers, all relayed to them by Mrs. Keech. Some members bake cakes in the shape of flying saucers to be consumed during their gatherings while local college football scores are closely debated.
Ken Hollings
Feminism has had exactly the same problem that "political correctness" has had: people keep using the phrase without really knowing what it means.
Caitlin Moran
I see the last two millennia as laid out in columns, like a reverse ledger sheet. It's as if I'm standing at the top of the twenty-first century looking downwards to 2000. Future centuries float as a gauzy sheet stretching over to the left. I also see people, architecture and events laid out chronologically in the columns. When I think of the year 1805, I see Trafalgar, women in the clothes of that era, famous people who lived then, the building, etc. The sixth to tenth centuries are very green, the Middle Ages are dark with vibrant splashes of red and blue and the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are brown with rich, lush colours in the furniture and clothing.
Claudia Hammond
I am a massive slag!" I think to myself, in a motivational way. "I'm a Lady Sex Adventuress! I'm a Pirate of Privates! I'm a swashfuckler!" ... I think of "Teenage Whore" by Courtney Love as my personal anthem.
Caitlin Moran
It was like bouncing tennis balls off a mystery piece of furniture and deducing, from the direction in which the balls ricocheted, whether it was a chair or a table or a Welsh dresser.
Marcus Chown
Every sport pretends to be literature. . .
Alistair Cooke
When a woman says, ‘I have nothing to wear!’, what she really means is, ‘There’s nothing here for who I’m supposed to be today.
Caitlin Moran
...That Great Cocktail Cabinet in the Sky...
Nigella Lawson
Parents drinking is the reason you came into the world, and if we didn't keep doing it then, by God, it would be the reason you went back out of it.
Caitlin Moran
It's the silliness--the profligacy, and the silliness--that's so dizzying: a seven-year-old will run downstairs, kiss you hard, and then run back upstairs again, all in less than 30 seconds. It's as urgent an item on their daily agenda as eating or singing. It's like being mugged by Cupid.
Caitlin Moran
I find it far more awesome, wonderful, that creation; our appearance in the world; should be the culmination, or at least one of the latest products of 3,000 Million years of organic evolution, than a kind of country trick, taking a rib out of a man's side in a trance.
David Attenborough
We will not be driven by fear ... if we remember that we are not descended from fearful men.
Edward R. Murrow
I think all wishes are the same, really," she continued. "Whether they ask for this, that, or the other, what they are really asking for is happiness.
William Joyce
I believe order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than ideology. I believe that in spite of the recent triumphs of science, men haven't changed much in the last two thousand years; and in consequence we must try to learn from history.
Kenneth Clark
I've spent a life-time attacking religious beliefs and have not wavered from a view of the universe that many would regard as bleak. Namely, that it is a meaningless place devoid of deity.However I'm unwilling simply to repeat the old arguments of the past when, in fact, God is a moving target and is taking all sorts of new shapes and forms. The arguments used against the long bow are not particularly useful when debating nuclear weapons, and the simple arguments against the old model gods are not sufficient when dealing with the likes of Davies et al.For example, the notion that God didn't exist, doesn't exist but may come into existence through the spread of consciousness throughout the universe is too clever to be pooh-poohed along Bertrand Russell lines. And if I had the time I could give you half a dozen other scientific theologies that will need snappier footwork from the atheist of the future.
Phillip Adams
We had found nothing, and had been lost several times already in one morning, so this was shaping up into a top travel experience.
Pete McCarthy
Morris tried to keep the books in some sort of order, but they always mixed themselves up. The tragedies needed cheering up and would visit with the comedies. The encyclopedias, weary of facts, would relax with the comic books and fictions. All in all it was an agreeable jumble.
William Joyce
But, of course, you might be asking yourself, 'Am I a feminist? I might not be. I don't know! I still don't know what it is! I'm too knackered and confused to work it out. That curtain pole really still isn't up! I don't have time to work out if I am a women's libber! There seems to be a lot to it. WHAT DOES IT MEAN?'I understand. So here is the quick way of working out if you're a feminist. Put your hand in your pants.a) Do you have a vagina? andb) Do you want to be in charge of it?If you said 'yes' to both, then congratulations! You're a feminist.
Caitlin Moran
As universities have turned into businesses, so students have turned into consumers.
Kenan Malik