Is Somewhere Else Better?

In about 1950 you weren’t allowed in the Royal enclosure at Ascot if you were divorced.
That would now exclude half the Royal Family.
( Sir Paul Coleridge )

For every single individual who escapes into the crowd, flees in cowardice from being a single individual.
( Søren Kierkegaard )

It’s Cheaper To Build Schools.
The key, I believe with all my heart, is social mobility.
Children of every background need to believe that hard work will be rewarded.
That if you study at school it will result in higher education and a job.
That – no matter where you come from – it is possible to get up and out if you want it bad enough, and if you work hard enough.
But social mobility is dead in this country now.
Too many have no hope of self-improvement.
There is an Old Etonian in 10 Downing Street who despises the idea of grammar schools.
Because they are unfair.
Just like life, you mean?
I spent the first five years of my life living in a flat above a greengrocer’s shop.
Yet I never doubted I could be anything I wanted to be.
Why did the riots happen?
Because we live with a lot of scum in our midst.
Mark Twain said, it is cheaper to build schools than jails.
But we did not build the schools, and we let the schools we do have rot.
Now we must build the jails.
( Tony Parsons )

The clock has stopped on my watch.
( David Cameron )

It’s not what happens to you that makes you great, it’s what you do.
( Rose Winfold )

Packed Off To Boarding School.
The things they say: “A lot has been written about my background, but the great privilege of my upbringing wasn’t just the wealth, it was the warmth” – Dave Cameron in The Big Issue.
Not just the wealth, eh?
But I suppose it came in handy.
As for warmth, his parents packed him off to boarding school almost as soon as he could walk.
I’d sooner see him selling The Big Issue than writing in it.
( Paul Routledge )

I never see any home cooking.
All I get is fancy stuff.
( Prince Philip )

I get up at 6am which is a shock for an old rock star, we normally don’t get up till the sun goes down, we’re like vampires.
( David Essex )

Is Somewhere Else Better?
There’s a greedy mentality based on self-gratification at any cost.
It’s a disappointing trend that has been growing in Britain for a long time and it bothers me.
My children are little at the moment, but in a few years they’ll want to go out with their friends.
I look at the town nearest to our village and I wonder if I want them going out there, or if there’s somewhere else that would be better.
If it gives my children the chance of growing up somewhere they’ll be happier and safer, it is something I will do.
( Gary Numan )

I abhor that media pressure to be ‘Fashionably skinny’ is affecting people’s mindset, particularly the younger generation, many of whom obsess about being an impossible weight.
( Lindsay Russell )

If he is not supposed to be that, then he is a hypocrite, and the higher he climbs on this path, the more dreadful a hypocrite he is. 
( Søren Kierkegaard )

I care a lot about my work.
I’m just not someone who concentrates on my career.
I think that’s a very boring way of looking at things.
( Jennifer Beals )

Staring Death In The Face.
I’ve always appreciated life and its fragility but it’s true what they say about staring death in the face and how that changes you.
I watched people jump to their deaths, and hundreds more die when the towers fell.
Each and every one left behind people who loved them, and none had any idea when they left home that day that it would be their last.
( Helen Fospero )

I’ve seen David Cameron with his arm round Nick Clegg’s shoulder.
And it’s not friendly is it?
It’s like a bloke who’s bred a prize pig.
( Stewart Lee )

My favourite films are ones that create an impression.
I feel that ‘The Tree of Life’ is a movie that people will still be talking about in 30 years.
Even if I disappear, I will always be the girl who was in that movie.
It’s amazing to be able to say that, especially at the beginning of my career.
It’s unbelievable and kind of shocking.
( Jessica Chastain )

Lord, give us weak eyes for things of little worth, and eyes clear-sighted in all of your truth.
( Søren Kierkegaard )

Celebrities Getting In For Free.
The Olympic Stadium, built with taxpayers’ money, filled with celebrities, royals and politicians, all getting in for free, while the millions who joined the ballot, hoping to see a world record broken so they’d have a piece of history to pass on to their children, are watching at home.
( Brian Reade )

They took the piss out of our tight jeans and boots.
Fashion is obviously different in Harlem to St Albans.
( Ed Macfarlane )

My top tip for gardeners is to pee on their compost.
My mum taught me that one.
( Will Young )

I Wasn’t Cool.
At primary school I behaved terribly.
I was always in trouble, always causing trouble.
When I went to Tonbridge I just continued along the same path.
Anything I could do to rebel, I would.
At the age of eleven I was about 6ft tall and my voice had completely broken.
That caused problems.
I was this gangly, spotty, very unattractive kid.
I wasn’t cool and I wasn’t a nerd.
I didn’t even want to fit in with anyone.
I’ve never tried to find my real parents.
I’m very grateful to my Mum and Dad for adopting me – they’re completely incredible people.
It was my dad who encouraged me to question everything, to forge my own path, to think, to read.
I always felt it was my right to question everything.
( Dan Stevens )

It is not truth that rules the world but illusions.
( Søren Kierkegaard )

As far as ageing goes, it’s rough.
It’s hard.
I rely on looks a lot.
Women’s calling cards, unfortunately, are based on their looks.
But I’m glad I’ve had all the radical experiences in my life.
I have a better perspective.
I try my best and I really am healthy.
I exercise like a fiend and do all that stuff that recovered drug addicts do.
( Debbie Harry )

I don’t read. I’ve got the concentration span of a gnat.
And I don’t sit on beaches.
But I like travelling alone to places, I’m very happy by myself.
I like to get off the beaten track, I’ve gone through South America and Cuba and India just wandering about.
I like the freedom.
( David Essex )

Nursing Is A Great Job.
I was a psychiatric nurse, working at a 24-hour emergency psychiatric centre in South London.
You need a sense of humour to work in that environment.
I think anyone, be it a policeman, nurse or ambulance driver, who sees human pain to that degree, every day of the week, chooses humour as a defence mechanism, which is really effective.
You have a laugh, but at the back of your mind you’re aware the vast majority of people you see are having a nightmare life and I don’t think you forget that.
Nursing is a great job and the thing I loved so much was working with the people, supporting each other, having a laugh and feeling that every day we’d achieved something.
Stand-up comedy is a weird job because it’s solitary and you haven’t got anyone to rely on when you’re on stage having bottles thrown at you.
Although thankfully that’s not happened for a while.
( Jo Brand )

When I got pregnant, I thought: I’ll never be lonely again.
( Acress Anna Friel, on becoming a mother )

I loved the Fonz from the moment I read the script.
Listen, I’d like to be him.
Man, youth is wasted on the young.
I wish I had the body of a 16-year-old and the brain I have now.
( Henry Winkler )

I Love Children.
I hate the question, ‘So, are you going to have children?’
But amazingly I have never had it from my Mum and Dad.
They never put pressure on any of us.
The only answer I have is, ‘If it happens for me – beautiful.’
I’ll have to wait and see.
I love children and I love the thought of having a family.
( Kylie Minogue )

All lives end, but not all conclude.
( Soren Kierkegaard )

Every time I go to a second-hand bookshop, a goblin book always seems to be the first book I find, and I feel compelled to buy it.
I find goblins’ sinister supernatural powers and nasty deceptions to be really fascinating, and I’ve become goblin-fixated.
I’ve started dressing up as a goblin, in a long hoodie-type shawl, and I’ve become a goblin, psychologically, if not physically.
I occasionally catch glimpses of goblins amongst crowds of people, but by the time I get over to where they were, they’ve disappeared.
It’s all very bizarre.
( Richard Ruston )

Most people tower over me, it’s not something I think about.
It always amazes me when those questions get asked.
It almost implies you don’t understand what it is to love someone.
But you don’t really think about those things.
( Jamie Cullum )

I regret every single tattoo I’ve ever had done.
If I could graft a new skin for myself, I would.
( Peaches Geldof )

I believe in the fact that God gave us two ears and one mouth for a reason, so we should listen and shut up, we talk too much.
( Sir Ranulph Fiennes )

I’m Not Going To Take Any Shit.
I was shitting it on my first day, absolutely terrified.
I swear it was the most nervous I have ever been in my life.
I’m loving it, though, more than I ever thought I would.
I’m just trying to be me, to be honest and say what I think.
I’m not going to take any shit though – that’s just me. I speak my mind.
But at the same time I am trying to make the auditionees feel OK, to give them some confidence and help them perform.
If that means singing along with them from my seat, then that’s what I do.
( Tulisa Contostavios )

This planet belongs to all of us.
Not just a handful of bankers, wankers and royalty.
( Rose Winfold )

Do not fly so high with your decisions that you forget that a decision is but a beginning.
How wretched and miserable it is to find in a person many good intentions but few good deeds.
And there are other dangers too, dangers of sin.
With all your good intentions, you must not forget your duty, neither should you forget to do it with joy.
And strive to carry your burdens and responsibilities in a surrendered way.
If you don’t, there is a danger of losing your decisiveness – of going through life without courage and fading away in death.
( Søren Kierkegaard )

What about Tom Jones?
He’s made a million and he’s a bloody awful singer.
( Prince Philip )

I was lucky to have fame very early in my life so it never bothered me.
I am very humble about it, very grateful to God for all the wonderful things that happened to me.
I feel it could all be a dream.
When people like Yehudi Menuhin and The Beatles embraced my music.
It was a miracle.
( Ravi Shankar )

People treat me like an idiot so I’m allowed to act like one from time to time.
It’s one of the perks.
( Abby Slovin )

Whereas in the old days one acquired eternal happiness by the grace of God, now too often the eternal happiness seems to have become like an aged and infirm pensioner who sustains his life in the house of the rich on the wretched crust of poverty.
( Søren Kierkegaard )

A country grows in history not only because of the heroism of its troops in the field of battle, it grows also when it turns to justice and to fight for the conservation of its interests.
( Aristide Briand )