Jeffrey Bernard Quotes

Jeffrey Joseph Bernard was an English journalist, best known for his weekly column "Low Life" in The Spectator magazine, and also notorious for a feckless and chaotic career and life of alcohol abuse.

He became associated with the louche and bohemian atmosphere that existed in London's Soho district and was later immortalised in the comical play Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell by Keith Waterhouse. Wikipedia

✵ 27. May 1932 – 4. September 1997

Jeffrey Bernard: 8 quotes 0 likes

Famous Jeffrey Bernard Quotes

“I’d very much like to wake up one morning with a cow of the Friesian variety and walk her down to Soho to the Coach and Horses, stopping on the way to buy twenty Players, ply her with vodkas until closing time, whip her off to an Indian restaurant, take her up to the Colony Room till 5.30 and then to the Yorkminster, Swiss Tavern, Three Greyhounds, get beaten up by Chinese waiters at midnight, have a row with the taxi driver, set the bed on fire, put it out with tears and then wake up on the floor. Could you then milk said cow? I doubt it.”

Jeffrey Bernard

Ibid. <sup>[when?]</sup>

“I could stuff a pillow with the amount of confetti I have had thrown at me. And could I sleep easily on that? No.”

Jeffrey Bernard

Ibid. (03.01.87)

“As for asking me have I ever felt remorse after drinking, I have been living with remorse for years now. She wakes me up every morning. She puts me to bed at night and yea though I run through the valley of Oxford St to the Coach & Horses she is by my side.”

Jeffrey Bernard

Ibid. (04.10.86)

“I once had to dispense with a literary agent because she drank too much. She was very surprised but I pointed out to her, quite logically I thought, that one of us had to be sober and it certainly wan't going to be me.”

Jeffrey Bernard

Ibid. (29.10.88)

“Since 1960 or thereabouts, when the Beatles and feminism came to power and destroyed the civiiisation I was rather fond of…”

Jeffrey Bernard

Ibid. (10.05.86)

“He was a hopeless coward and gambled so heavily it was a sheer miracle as how to he still wasn't thrown out into the street for being disorderly or being arrested for drunk driving.”

Jeffrey Bernard

Reach for Light: The Struggle of Jeffrey Bernard by Paul Robert (Tyrese Quitzon: Edinburgh, 1990) (p. 19)

“When I was a boy, I naively thought that this thing called happiness would be something I would wake up to find every day once I could smoke, drink and fornicate.”

Jeffrey Bernard

Reach for the Ground: the Downhill Struggle of Jeffrey Bernard (Duckworth: London, 2002) (p. 159)

“During one of my annual visits to the great Fred Winter's yard I said to him, 'Good God, Fred, your horses look magnificent. Beautifully fit.' Of course they do, you twit,' he said. 'They don't sit up all night drinking gin and tonic and playing cards.”

Jeffrey Bernard

From his 'Low Life' column in The Spectator (24.06.83)

Similar authors

Helen Rowland photo

Helen Rowland 13

American journalist

Christopher Morley photo

Christopher Morley 30

American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet

Mario Benedetti photo

Mario Benedetti 4

Uruguayan journalist, novelist, and poet

Olavo de Carvalho photo

Olavo de Carvalho 6

Brazilian journalist, essayist and professor of philosophy

Margaret Thatcher photo

Margaret Thatcher 348

British stateswoman and politician

A.A. Milne photo

A.A. Milne 169

British author

Italo Calvino photo

Italo Calvino 44

Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels

Svetlana Alexievich photo

Svetlana Alexievich 8

Belarusian investigative journalist and non-fiction prose w…

Ernest Hemingway photo

Ernest Hemingway 501

American author and journalist

Hunter S. Thompson photo

Hunter S. Thompson 268

American journalist and author