London Quotes

A child in London asked her father what autumn was, having heard it spoken of these days, and the father in explanation said it was a season, though not a major one. In cities, this father said, you did not feel autumn so much, not as you felt the heat of summer or the bite of winter air, or even the slush of spring. He said that, and then the next day sent for the child and said he had been talking nonsense. 'Autumn is on now,' he said. 'You can see it in the parks,' and he took his child for a nature walk.

~ William Trevor

A sprawling North London parkland, composed of oaks, willows and chestnuts, yews and sycamores, the beech and the birch; that encompasses the city’s highest point and spreads far beyond it; that is so well planted it feels unplanned; that is not the country but is no more a garden than Yellowstone; that has a shade of green for every possible felicitation of light; that paints itself in russets and ambers in autumn, canary-yellow in the splashy spring; with tickling bush grass to hide teenage lovers and joint smokers, broad oaks for brave men to kiss against, mown meadows for summer ball games, hills for kites, ponds for hippies, an icy lido for old men with strong constitutions, mean llamas for mean children and, for the tourists, a country house, its façade painted white enough for any Hollywood close-up, complete with a tea room, although anything you buy there should be eaten outside with the grass beneath your toes, sitting under the magnolia tree, letting the white blossoms, blush-pink at their tips, fall all around you. Hampstead Heath! Glory of London! Where Keats walked and Jarman fucked, where Orwell exercised his weakened lungs and Constable never failed to find something holy.

~ Zadie Smith

London, London, London town,You can toughen up or get thrown around.

~ Kano

Planning is for the world's great cities, for Paris, London, and Rome, for cities dedicated, at some level, to culture. Detroit, on the other hand, was an American city and therefore dedicated to money, and so design had given way to expediency.

~ Jeffrey Eugenides

The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.

~ J.m. Barrie

It is frightfully difficult to know much about the fairies, and almost the only thing for certain is that there are fairies wherever there are children.

~ J.m. Barrie

He threw the knife at Karian’s face, deliberately catching his temple. “Sons of Kings shouldn’t play with sharp toys.

~ Tracey-Anne Mccartney

As we drifted away from the Tower Bridge, I saw a single silhouette standing against the bright lamplight. Even now when I was nearly asleep, I could recognise her. Her shoulders were hunched up as if she was upset. Whether she was upset that she had nearly killed me or that she had let me get away, I was unsure. Then she turned around and walked to join the other silhouettes standing in a group farther back. Now I could not see which one was Rose – they were all joint together to make one.

~ Erica Sehyun Song

Mothers are urgently trying to tell something to their daughters, and this urgency is precisely what repels their daughters, forcing them to turn away. Mothers are left stranded, madly holding a lump of London clay, some grass, some white tubers, a dandelion, a fat worm passing the world through itself.

~ Zadie Smith

He reasoned, even as a young man, that traditions may linger as he walked though the oracles of time. In later years he thought his mind may one day blur, should he survive to an old age, but as he spread ink on paper, transmitted and shared with those who came after him his experiences, his own great adventures, he believed perhaps they, like he, would give way to pause to reflect on how...hard it always was to open his eyes to begin a new day...

~ Andrew Coster

He reasoned, even as a young man, that traditions may linger as he walked though the oracles of time. In later years he thought his mind may one day blur, should he survive to an old age, but as he spread ink on paper, transmitted and shared with those who came after him his experiences, his own grHe reasoned, even as a young man, that traditions may linger as he walked though the oracles of time. In later years he thought his mind may one day blur, should he survive to an old age, but as he spread ink on paper, transmitted and shared with those who came after him his experiences, his own great adventures, he believed perhaps they, like he, would give way to pause to reflect on how...hard it always was to open his eyes to begin a new day. eat adventures, he believed perhaps they, like he, would give way to pause to reflect on how goddamned hard it always was to open his eyes to begin a new day.

~ Andrew Coster

My novels are set in a global space and pace. However, I have never visited most of the places. I wrote my first book in London but the story took the reader to places in Mexico, Denmark and Russia, and carefully avoided London. I access these global locations with my feet planted in front of my computer. I will use my internet connection to carefully enter the streets of a foreign city and find out how long it will take my main character to get from the airport to the city center – and if there are any shortcuts on the way. I wanted to do something new. The world is becoming a global village and we have to understand these different cultures. There is a Danish culture, an Israeli culture and so on. So if you want to go to Denmark, then read the book.

~ Enock Maregesi

He was a poet, and they are never exactly grown-up.

~ J.m. Barrie

Put the case that he lived in an atmosphere of evil, and that all he saw of children was their being generated in great numbers for certain destruction. Put the case that he often saw children solemnly tried at a criminal bar, where they were held up to be seen; put the case that he habitually knew of their being imprisoned, whipped, transported, neglected, cast out, qualified in all ways for the hangman, and growing up to be hanged. Put the case that pretty nigh all the children he saw in his daily business life he had reason to look upon as so much spawn, to develop into the fish that were to come to his net,––to be prosecuted, defended, forsworn, made orphans, bedevilled somehow.

~ Charles Dickens

Upstairs on a bus! It’s Unbelievable

~ Diane Samuels

I never realized before that taking care of someone makes you love them more than when they take care of you.

~ Helen Smith

They were both lost in cities that would not pause even to shrug

~ Monica Ali

Cos there's holes in this world,see. Holes. And the likes of Thommo, and Keith, and me, and Kenny, we just sort of fall through em. We weren't never bad kids, we just didn't have nothing to hold on to, that's all.

~ Ian Ayris

The great ages did not perhaps produce much more talent than ours,' [T.S.] Eliot wrote. 'But less talent was wasted.

~ Jonah Lehrer

A vision of the little house in Soho flickered across his mind’s eye, his mother at a desk, writing in her journal, with hazy sunlight streaming through the morning windows. The woman inhabited a world he had once thought his own – a world of publishers and reliable suppliers. A London that was confident and competent amid its grey, puddle-strewn streets.

~ Sara Sheridan

Behind every door in London there are stories, behind every one ghosts. The greatest writers in the history of the written word have given them substance, given them life.And so we readers walk, and dream, and imagine, in the city where imagination found its great home.

~ Anna Quindlen

I've started to hate this city, this country, all these STUPID FUCKING PEOPLE.

~ Nick Bantock

When you're depressed you retreat and you go into a smaller world. This is why Brighton worked well for the story, because it's a smaller world than London.

~ Sara Sheridan

I woke up feeling alone, so lonely. The night before, I had cried myself to sleep. I lay there on the floor, listening to the tube trains passing beneath me. I thought, All those hundreds and thousands and millions of people. London, London - I hate you. I picked myself up and got ready.

~ Tracey Emin

The city was alive, and so was he...

~ Kassandra Cross

Cutting my roots and leaving my home and family when I was 18 years old forced me to build my home in other things, like my music, stories and my journey. The last years I have more or less constantly been on my way, on the road, always leaving and never arriving, which also means leaving people. I’ve loved and lost and I have regrets and I miss and no matter how many times you leave, start over, achieve success or travel places it’s other people that matter. People, friends, family, lovers, strangers – they will forever stay with you, even if only through memory. I’ve grown to appreciate people to the deepest core and I’m trying to learn how to tell people what I want to tell them when I have the chance, before it’s too late. …

~ Charlotte Eriksson

Because we know he was simply a man, with weakness and frailties. Who yearned for the same things all of us do--to love and be loved

~ Kristen Callihan

Some of us are happy with our African hair, thank you very much. I don't want some poor Indian girl's hair. And I wish to God I could buy black hair products from black people for once. How we going to make it in this country if we don't make our own business?

~ Zadie Smith

Our memories are like a city: we tear some structures down, and we use the rubble of the old to raise up the new ones.

~ Tom Pollock

In my own shire, if I was sadHomely comforters I had:The earth, because my heart was sore,Sorrowed for the son she bore;And standing hills, long to remain,Shared their short-lived comrade's pain.And bound for the same bourn as I,On every road I wandered by,Trod beside me, close and dear,The beautiful and death-struck year:Whether in the woodland brownI heard the beechnut rustle down,And saw the purple crocus paleFlower about the autumn dale;Or littering far the fields of MayLady-smocks a-bleaching lay,And like a skylit water stoodThe bluebells in the azured wood. Yonder, lightening other loads,The season range the country roads,But here in London streets I kenNo such helpmates, only men;And these are not in plight to bear,If they would, another's care.They have enough as 'tis: I seeIn many an eye that measures meThe mortal sickness of a mindToo unhappy to be kind.Undone with misery, all they canIs to hate their fellow man;And till they drop they needs must stillLook at you and wish you ill.

~ A.e. Housman

I like the spirit of this great London which I feel around me. Who but a coward would pass his whole life in hamlets, and for ever abandon his faculties to the eating rust of obscurity?

~ Charlotte Brontë

London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation.

~ G.k. Chesterton

Italy and London are the only places where I don't feel to exist on sufferance.

~ E.m. Forster

It was as if she was a dream, like London, which he could not entirely grasp and of which he was not worthy. He wanted to be part of it but had forgotten how. It seemed extraordinary and strange that this paragon among women had condescended to travel on his ship. In fact, she’d insisted upon it. Her presence was at once otherworldly and familiar, none of which explained why his brain ceased to function when he was in her company.

~ Sara Sheridan

London was one of the worst places to have a bad day and one of the best places to have a good day

~ Mhairi Mcfarlane

Like most cities, London could be a lonely place...

~ Kassandra Cross

For I'm afraid of loneliness; shiveringly, terribly afraid. I don't mean the ordinary physical loneliness, for here I am, deliberately travelled away from London to get to it, to its spaciousness and healing. I mean that awful loneliness of spirit that is the ultimate tragedy of life. When you've got to that, really reached it, without hope, without escape, you die. You just can't bear it, and you die.

~ Elizabeth Von Arnim

I want my life to be the greatest story. My very existence will be the greatest poem.Watch me burn.Love always, Charlotte

~ Charlotte Eriksson

London has the trick of making its past, its long indelible past, always a part of its present. And for that reason it will always have meaning for the future, because of all it can teach about disaster, survival, and redemption. It is all there in the streets. It is all there in the books.

~ Anna Quindlen

The wiry man scratched his head, looked the two inquisitors up and down and cleared his throat softly. “We must be quick.” He turned to go, pulling his cloak over his head and shuffling through the door into the moonlight. The two inquisitors moved with impossible silence behind, floating across the straw-covered floor like the cats on the walls outside the hut. The cats froze at the disturbance before scurrying noiselessly into the shadows as the three silhouettes crossed the ten yards of grass before the blackness of the forest swallowed them. No fires flickered at this time, when the full moon was highest in the cloudless summer sky, and the three were the only waking souls in the hamlet.

~ Gregory Figg