“An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one.”
George Mikes (1912–1987) Hungarian-born British author
How to Be an Alien: A Handbook for Beginners and More Advanced Pupils (1946)
Womanpower (p. 128)
The Female Eunuch (1970)
“An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one.”
George Mikes (1912–1987) Hungarian-born British author
How to Be an Alien: A Handbook for Beginners and More Advanced Pupils (1946)
Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist
"Off the Page: Martin Amis" (2003)
Context: I once wrote, in The Information, that an Englishman wouldn't bother to attend a reading even if the author in question was his favorite living writer, and also his long-lost brother — even if the reading was taking place next door. Whereas Americans go out and do things. But Meeting the Author, for me, is Meeting the Reader. Some of the little exchanges that take place over the signing table I find very fortifying: they make up for some of the other stuff you get.
E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist
"Liberty In England", Speech (June 21, 1935), reprinted in Abinger Harvest (1936).
“The desert is squeezed in the tube-train next to you,
The desert is in the heart of your brother.”
T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author
Choruses from The Rock (1934)
Context: You neglect and belittle the desert.
The desert is not remote in southern tropics
The desert is not only around the corner,
The desert is squeezed in the tube-train next to you,
The desert is in the heart of your brother.
Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher
O poeta é um fingidor.
Finge tão completamente
Que chega a fingir que é dor
A dor que deveras sente.
"Autopsicografia" ["Autopsychography"], in Presença, No. 36 (November 1932)
Fernando Pessoa's most translated poem.
Richard Zenith's translation:
The poet is a faker
Who's so good at his act
He even fakes the pain
Of pain he feels in fact.
“The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don't turn against him, they crush those beneath them.”
Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights
Heathcliff (Ch. XI).
Wuthering Heights (1847)
Tom Stoppard (1937) British playwright
Misattributed <br class="br">Source: Darryl Hannah http://www.idolpleasures.com/daryl_hannah.shtml.