#la

He tells you stories, but then, after a while, when you want more, he doesn't give you more. He insists on this old elaboration, the old stories that never changes. ↗

— Albert Finney

#changes #elaboration #give #insists #more

Then there was Clark Ashton Smith, who wrote for Weird Tales and who had a wild imagination. He wasn't a very talented writer, but his imagination was wonderful. ↗

— Jack Vance

#had #his #imagination #smith #talented

I like playing accents, and doing things like that, it was fun. It was fun. ↗

— Albert Finney

#doing #fun #i #like #playing

Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature. ↗

— Jean Cocteau

#commonplace #did #done #effect #freshness

All men are created equal, it is only men themselves who place themselves above equality. ↗

— David Allan Coe

#above #created #equal #men #only

It's a marvellous life, a gregarious life that we've had. We're very lucky in that way. Unlike writers or painters, we don't sit down in front of a blank canvas and say, 'How do I start? Where do I start?' ↗

— Albert Finney

#blank canvas #canvas #down #front #gregarious

When Lalit Modi came to the podium after the final of the third Indian Premier League, with minutes ticking away on his reign, he had what few administrators at presentation ceremonies can claim to have enjoyed: a captive audience. What would it be? You won't have Modi to kick around any more, a la Richard Nixon? Old BCCI vice-presidents never die, they just fade away, a la Douglas MacArthur? Not quite, although Modi, for him, flirted with rhetoric: 'Indian People's League… I have lived a dream… Humble servant of the game.' Then there was the quote from the Bhagavad Gita, which some oblivious viewers may have mistaken for another sponsor (coming soon: the Mahabharata Moment of Success). Finally there came a defiant roar: 'We should not allow this brand to be diluted and we will not. ↗

— Gideon Haigh

#commercialism #cricket #douglas-macarthur #indian-premier-league #lalit-modi

Contemporary Britain seems an endlessly fascinating place to me - but if I knew a little bit more about other places, and other times, maybe it wouldn't. ↗

— Jonathan Coe

#bit #britain #contemporary #endlessly #fascinating

The world is not going into concentric blocs of power. It is actually going into a diffusion of power with more centres of decision-making than ever in human civilisation. That requires you to place yourself in far more hubs of power than ever before. ↗

— William Hague

#before #blocs #centres #civilisation #decision-making

I live a perfectly happy and comfortable life in Blair's Britain, but I can't work up much affection for the culture we've created for ourselves: it's too cynical, too knowing, too ironic, too empty of real value and meaning. ↗

— Jonathan Coe

#blair #britain #comfortable #comfortable life #created