The British do not expect happiness. I had the impression, all the time that I lived there, that they do not want to be happy; they want to be right.

The very sight of a daffodil still makes me shiver, because spring in the north of England is always so bitter.

Do your parents know you’re here?’ asked the lady at social Services. ‘No,’ I said, ‘but I want to know about children’s homes.’ I had to stand on my toes to see over the reception...

The word bollocks seems strong, punk rock, and imposing, but in reality, bollocks is always too tame to make much of an impact.

All the cliches of glamorous sophistication have little appeal to me. Do I want to live the British version of ‘Dynasty?’ No thanks!

I think the British have the distinction above all other nations of being able to put new wine into old bottles without bursting them.

However British you may be, I am more British still.

I’m actually going in to ER as the new British intern.

As a kid in British Columbia, going back a long way, I learned to skate.

The mice were furious.”[…]”Oh yes,” said the old man mildly.”Yes well so I expect were the dogs and cats and duckbilled platypuses, but…””Ah, but they hadn’t paid for it you see, had they?””Look,” said Arthur,...

If my critics saw me walking over the Thames they would say it was because I couldn’t swim.

If they wanted their shit stirred, then stirred their shit was jolly well going to be.

The Times is a paper which is seldom found in any hands but those of the highly educated.

I have flown in just about everything, with all kinds of pilots in all parts of the world – British, French, Pakistani, Iranian, Japanese, Chinese – and there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between...

One morning, as he sat at his desk, he heard the sound of a horse’s hooves on the path outside his house. He stepped out on to the verandah. There, on a tall grey horse,...

My brothers and sisters of America, there is not the least shadow of hope that India can ever be Christianised. After two hundred years of vain efforts and of spending millions of dollars with the...

There is nobody as hopelessly vulgar as a British aristocrat…

A British declaration be taken against Martinez for ‘capturing and robbing us.

When I began visiting Bordeaux in 1979, only a handful of writers were there to taste the wines in the spring (and nearly all were British).

The Americans, who are the most efficient people on the earth, have carried [phrase-making] to such a height of perfection and have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed phrases that they can...

A five-week sand blizzard?” said Deep Thought haughtily. “You ask this of me who have contemplated the very vectors of the atoms in the Big Bang itself? Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff.

Yer a good lad, Atticus, mowin’ me lawn and killin’ what Brits come around.

There were people who believed their opportunities to live a fulfilled life were hampered by the number of Asians in England, by the existance of a royal family, by the volume of traffic that passed...

I grew up with British rock.

Then, slowly, like the sunrise peeking over the horizon, she smiled.She snapped the box closed.She didn’t scream. She didn’t run. She didn’t faint.There might have been a little crying.But mostly… she danced.

Bicky rocked, like a jelly in a high wind.

My flat’s about half a mile away, and you know what I’d like most of all in the world? I’d like a cup of tea. Come on, let’s go and put the kettle on.

Statistics show that the nature of English crime is reverting to its oldest habits. In a country where so many desire status and wealth, petty annoyances can spark disproportionately violent behaviour. We become frustrated because...

Oh God, not another fucking beautiful day.

In 1860 a total eclipse of the sun was visible in British America.

The attack on the British embassy in Tehran came just days after the Iranian ‘parliament’ voted to expel the British ambassador, and therefore reeks of official complicity.

The British tried to repress it.

I am confident that the British people will not be intimidated by terrorism.

The British have always been madly overambitious, and from one angle it can seem like bravery, but from another it looks suspiciously like a lack of foresight.

I grinned. “I’m anybody’s for a cuppa and a biscuit.

Excuse me, I must go and putt

The ancillary aspect of every British city now is the council estate.

Cavendish was a great Man with extraordinary singularities—His voice was squeaking his manner nervous He was afraid of strangers & seemed when embarrassed to articulate with difficulty—He wore the costume of our grandfathers. Was enormously...

The British, he thought, must be gluttons for satire: even the weather forecast seemed to be some kind of spoof, predicting every possible combination of weather for the next twenty-four hours without actually committing itself...

[Taken from a BBC documentary]Tariq was born in Lahore, now in Pakistan, then part of British-ruled India, in 1943. A Catholic school education did nothing to shake his life-long atheism, which he shared with his...

Then one woman looked directly at her husband. “Is our place gone?” “I’m afraid so, girl,” he said. “There isn’t much left up there. But we’re alive. We’re all lucky to be alive. We’d have...

Grandma’s house had the atmosphere of a Tupperware box left out in the sun. Like a tropical flower, she had to be kept warm and moist at all times, or she would wilt and die.

The British retreat is over and now the advance will begin.

But, of course, you might be asking yourself, ‘Am I a feminist? I might not be. I don’t know! I still don’t know what it is! I’m too knackered and confused to work it out....

We were divided by color. Not black and white, but colour/color. She was British, and I was honoured to engage her in a spelling debate.

And I definitely do that very British thing of, take things with a pinch of salt, stiff upper lip, you know what I mean?

I don’t know if that’s really necessary. Both AT&T and British Telecom can operate independently — they both have very good global operations.

Who am I?” She whispered. Alex opened his mouth as if to correct her, but then he said, “You are my love.

I like the fact that I have good old-fashioned British teeth with a big gap.

Royal Young’s writing is that rare blend of irony and beauty.