Winter has arrived in North London. Snow has settled. The white snow looks beautiful and covers everything my eyes can see, yet beneath the incomprehensible beauty, the snow freezes greenery which struggles to breathe. Green...

Nowadays, people resort to all kinds of activities in order to calm themselves after a stressful event: performing yoga poses in a sauna, leaping off bridges while tied to a bungee, killing imaginary zombies with...

I have had so many Dwellings, Nat, that I know these Streets as well as a strowling Beggar: I was born in this Nest of Death and Contagion and now, as they say, I have...

In England I am always madam; I arrived too late to ever be a miss. In New York I have only been madamed once, by the doorman at the Carlyle Hotel.

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

The city defeated him. It refused to be bent into shape; it stayed a willful, sprawling, sinful place. It even told him as much. When he walked through the gutted wreck of old Saint Paul’s,...

There’s this idea that it has to be made in London. But we’ve got everything up here, and if you’ve got comics who are gifted because of where they’re from, you shouldn’t drag them away...

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...

Do you realise that people die of boredom in London suburbs? It’s the second biggest cause of death amongs the English in general. Sheer boredom…

I was taken to a villa to meet Sabri al-Banna, known as ‘Abu Nidal’ (‘father of struggle’), who was at the time emerging as one of Yasser Arafat’s main enemies. The meeting began inauspiciously when...

I lived in London for eight years and I like to say that I am two parts American and one part British because I lived there for a third of my life.

I don’t know if there is actually more rain here in England, or if it was just that the rain seemed to be so deliberately annoying. Every drop hit the window with a peevish “Am...

The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane. Each sentence we produce, whether we know it or not, is a mongrel mouthful...

How sweet the morning air is! See how that one little cloud floats like a pink feather from some gigantic flamingo. Now the red rim of the sun pushes itself over the London cloud-bank. It...

You read and write and sing and experience, thinking that one day these things will build the character you admire to live as. You love and lose and bleed best you can, to the extreme,...

London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation.

London was a city of ghosts, some deader than others. Thorne knew that in this respect, it wasn’t unlike any other major city – New York or Paris or Sydney – but he felt instinctively...

Be informed, also, that this good and savoury Parish is the home of Hectors, Trapanners, Biters who all go under the general appelation of Rooks. Here are all the Jilts, Cracks, Prostitutes, Night-walkers, Whores, Linnen-lifters,...

In their final testament, the heroic brothers in the London attacks provided great lessons to the Islamic nation and Muslims in Pakistan to oppose the infidels.

The fairies, as their custom, clapped their hands with delight over their cleverness, and they were so madly in love with the little house that they could not bear to think they had finished it.

London is the most multicultural, mixed-race place on Earth.

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

There are so many great galleries and museums in London, but they can be very crowded during the day.

LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of...

I resolutely refuse to believe that the state of Edward’s health had anything to do with this, and I don’t say this only because I was once later accused of attacking him ‘on his deathbed.’...

Relations are really good right now. Maybe the bombings in Madrid and London have brought the two continents together.

English rain feels obligatory, like paperwork. It dampens already damn days and slicks the stones.

Never patronize your readers. That means don’t talk down to them.

It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.

6 months, 2 weeks, 4 days,and I still don’t know which month it was thenor what day it is now.Blurred out linesfrom hangovers to coffeeAnother vagabond lost to love.4am alone and on my way.These are...

Day 72I remember oranges and you don’t mind me leaving the queue momentarily to find some. When you say, Of course, you reach for my arm in sympathy and recognition. This may be the thing...

One of the the things she most liked about the city -apart from all its obvious attractions, the theatre, the galleries, the exhilarating walks by the river- was that so few people ever asked you...

Words cannot do justice to the pleasures of a good bookshop. Ironically.(Waterstones Trafalgar Square)

I loved being in London. Always walking everywhere, always out and about and always at markets, walking around Brick Lane and Covent Garden and Soho.

If you aren’t paranoid before you arrive in this city, give it a few weeks and you will soon notice it creeping in, dripping into your subconscious like a leaky tap. The trick is not...

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

I don’t know what London’s coming to — the higher the buildings the lower the morals.

I loved London. In the 1970s… it was very exciting, really wild.

Meanwhile, we have carved out a place for ourselves among the dead; the glittering pinnacles of commerce rise along the skyline, their foundations sunk in a charnel house; and the lost lie forgotten below us...

We’ve got really great story here in New London. We should tell it.

Finally, there’s a sense in which I look at this Westminster village and London intelligentsia as an outsider.

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

I will try to win the Olympics gold in London.

It is fortunate for this community that I am not a criminal.

I was free with every road as my home. No limitations and no commitments. But then summer passed and winter came and I fell short for safety. I fell for its spell, slowly humming me...

And marbled clouds go scudding byThe many-steepled London sky.

From the top of the bus she could see the vast bowl of London spreading out to the horizon: splendid shops with mannequins in the window, interesting people and already a much bigger world.

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.

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...

You can see the people who thought they could come to London, bend over and pick gold off the streets. They’re all lying on benches in Trafalgar Square with hernias and cans of Special Brew.