60 quotes
Generosity is a virtue for individuals, not Governments. When governments are generous it is with other people's money, other people's safety, other people's future.
The Children of Men (1992)
I can understand the poor and stupid voting for Marxism or one of its fashionable variants. If you've no hope of being other than a slave, you may as well opt for the most efficient form of slavery.
A Taste for Death (1986)
She couldn't remember when her interest in him, in his mysteriousness, his silences, his power, had grown into fascination, but she knew the precise moment when fascination had sharpened into desire.
A Certain Justice (1997)
The street and the houses had a perfection which was almost intimidating. No weed, thought Kate, would surely dare to push its unsanctified tendrils through these carefully tended small lawns and flower beds.
A Certain Justice (1997)
They had been married for thirty-two years. Did he really know so little about her?
A Certain Justice (1997)
Cordelia was fumbling in her shoulder bag for her own key. As usual the object most required had fallen to the bottom of the bag.
An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972)
"If there's any sort of existence after death we shall all know it soon enough. If there isn't, we shan't exist to complain that we've been cheated."
An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972)
I don't see why escapist literature should not also be a work of art.
Time to be Earnest – a Fragment of Biography (1999)
"My mother used to say, 'Don't marry for money, but marry where money is! ' There's no harm in looking for money as long as there's kindness as well."
An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972)
I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.
Paris Review (1995)
How fragile was that elegant, complicated bridge of order and reason which the law had constructed down the centuries over the abyss of social and psychological chaos.
A Certain Justice (1997)
A career which had begun so full of promise but which, like a stream with too feeble a spring, had spent itself with a sad inevitability among the sandy shallows of unrealised ambition.
A Certain Justice (1997)
One of my earliest loves was the Book of Common Prayer. I was seduced by it, by its beautiful words and the sense of history.
I don't think writers choose the genre, the genre chooses us. I wrote out of the wish to create order out of disorder, the liking of a pattern.
We all die alone. We shall endure death as once we enjoyed birth. You can't share either experience.
The Children of Men (1992)
I didn't love him, but I liked him being in love with me.
The Children of Men (1992)
Whatever else I am now, I'm never bored.
The Children of Men (1992)
His face was a mask betraying nothing.
A Certain Justice (1997)
Mrs Buckley was revealed as a slight, nervous-looking woman with a small precisely formed mouth between bulging cheeks, which gave her the appearance of a hamster.
A Certain Justice (1997)
When my turn comes I propose to take my lethal capsule comfortably in bed at home and preferably on my own.
The Children of Men (1992)