Popular quotes about London! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
London is the most multicultural, mixed race place on Earth. And I love that. I grew up in a neighborhood in London where English wasn't necessarily the first language - maybe because of that, I love to travel. Every penny I've ever saved has been spent on airline tickets to different corners of the world. I think that's partly from growing up in London. I've taken that bit with me - this ability to fit in with any culture and be fascinated and respectful with any culture all started from growing up in London.
JJ FeildIn London I have been by turns poor and rich, hopeful and despondent, successful and down and out, utterly miserable and ecstatically, dizzily happy. I belong to London as each of us can belong to only one place on this earth. And, in the same way, London belongs to me.
Gertrude LawrenceThe real power is not corporate; it is private. They choose not to have a name. It is a dynasty of banking families - Rothschild and Rockefeller being two - that operate chiefly out of London, in the boardrooms out of the city of London and the Bank of England, which they own.
Betty DodsonWe shall defend every village, every town and every city. The vast mass of London itself, fought street by street, could easily devour an entire hostile army; and we would rather see London laid in ruins and ashes than that it should be tamely and abjectly enslaved.
Winston ChurchillThe great thing about London is the little pockets of culture, like Hackney, which has its panto and its great community. Of course there's also the West End with its brilliant theatres and thriving tourism but to also have areas like Hackney which are so community based but not exclusive, that remind you that those surrounding you are the most important, is what makes London what it is.
Clive RoweI suppose my dream was always about existing outside of London. Obviously the film world 10 years ago, when I first kicked off, was a very different landscape. Meeting anyone for a job on the crew, and on the cast, always meant a trip to London for me. But it's changed quite dramatically. You can't completely exist outside of what's down there, but things have changed massively.
Shane MeadowsI wanted to become an actor. I went to Guildhall School of Music and Drama, which is one of the main drama schools in London where you go when you are older. But I was doing the junior one when I was a kid. And some friends there had agents. I was fourteen and I was like, "I want an agent! It sounds awesome!" I had no idea what that was. I thought those guys looked like men in black. They were hanging around in suits all the time. So I luckily got a very good agent in London and started auditioning. And then when I was 16, I got my first film and I've been working ever since.
Douglas BoothI do find London exciting. Much as I hate to agree with that tedious old git Samuel Johnson, and despite the pompous imbecility of his famous remark about when a man is tired of London he is tired of life...I can't dispute it.
Bill BrysonI go home to London in between jobs, and in London, my life has nothing to do with the business. It's a family life, hanging with friends.
Clive OwenNot part of any London combination and you have to go a long way from London really to... to throw that feeling off. So, it's right and fitting that the Beatles came from Liverpool. If they hadn't, I wouldn't have got involved. It wouldn't have interested me. And they wouldn't have hired me.
Derek TaylorI guess a certain contingent of the musicians in London at the beginning of the '70s were fed up with denim and the hippies. And I think we kind of wanted to go somewhere else.
David BowieLondon is satisfied, Paris is resigned, but New York is always hopeful. Always it believes that something good is about to come off, and it must hurry to meet it.
Dorothy ParkerIf you were smart in 1807 you moved to London, if you were smart in 1907 you moved to New York City, and if you are smart in 2007 you move to Asia.
Jim RogersKate(Henshaw-Nuttal) was superb. The same for Stella(Damasus-Aboderin) and, of course, Jeta and Jumai(Joseph). They can work anywhere in the world. I think you can put Jeta and Stella on a plane and fly them to London or to Los Angeles to go and work.
Nick MoranGo on writing plays, my boy, One of these days one of these London producers will go into his office and say to his secretary, "Is there a play from Shaw this morning?" and when she says, "No," he will say, "Well, then we'll have to start on the rubbish." And that's your chance, my boy.
George Bernard ShawAn actor who knows his business ought to be able to make the London telephone directory sound enthralling.
Donald SindenComedy comes from a place of hurt. Charlie Chaplin was starving and broke in London, and that's where he got his character 'the tramp' from. It's a bad situation that he transformed into comedic one.
Chris TuckerAn American in London...cannot but be impressed and charmed by the city. The momumentality of Washington, the thriving business of New York, the antique intimacy of Boston, plus a certain spacious and open feeling reminiscent of Denver and San Francisco-all these he finds combined for his pleasure.
John UpdikeA collector recently bought at public auction, in London, for one hundred and fifty-seven guineas, an autograph of Shakespeare; but for nothing a school-boy can read Hamlet and can detect secrets of highest concernment yet unpublished therein.
Ralph Waldo EmersonI wasn't captivated by the romance of Paris or London. I love visiting, but I'd rather be in L.A.
Edward RuschaI need a bath." He chuckled. "You smell of smoke, as do I." The duke turned, leaning heavily on his cane. "Jameson, open the carriage door. We shall return to the house." Beth smiled up at Christian. "Shall we adjourn to the house to get some ointment for your hands and a bath, my love?" His eyes lit. "A bath?" Grandfather snorted. "Someone send to London for a special license! Now.
Karen HawkinsI hate going out in Brighton now. It's different in London. People respect you more there.
Katie PriceBerlin seems like a place of healing to me though: you have both the Holocaust Memorial and Hiroshima Strasse side-by-side there. You have the whole last century libraried and you can see exactly what we did. Now there's lots of artists and musicians moving there because they can't afford the rent in London and New York, and they're having children and making it a gentle place. It seems to be a place of hope now.
Robert MontgomeryI grew up near King's Cross station in London, living in an apartment block where my dad was a caretaker.
Phil DanielsI don't have credibility, I'm a comedian. I'm not Ed Murrow up on the roof in a London fog reporting on the blitz.
Dennis MillerWestward, beyond the still pleasant, but, even then, no longer solitary, hamlet of Charing, a broad space, broken here and there by scattered houses and venerable pollards, in the early spring of 1467, presented the rural scene for the sports and pastimes of the inhabitants of Westminister and London.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonTo have been selected to represent Team South Africa at the London 2012 Olympic Games in the individual 400m and the 4x400m relay is a real honor and I am so pleased that years of hard work, determination and sacrifice have all come together.
Oscar PistoriusIn Moscow I feel most comfortable. I'm used to four different seasons; it's difficult for people in London to understand. People brought up in Russia like my kids want to play in the snow.
Roman AbramovichIn London I had pear trees in my back garden, so I'd make my own pear and green tomato chutney.
Stephen Moyer... the business of life shuts us up within the environs of London and within sight of human advancement, which I should be so very glad to believe in without seeing.
George EliotI'm French. I have not become an Englishman. I have the impression of living on an island called Arsenal. If you fancy a sightseeing tour of London, don't ask me. You would get lost.
Arsene WengerBernard [Leach] had acquired many [Shoji] Hamada works. Some of them, it was interesting - first of all, Hamada worked in St. Ives for about four years before returning to Japan to start his own pottery. He had exhibitions in London, and if these exhibitions didn't sell out, the galleries were instructed to send the remaining work down to the Leach Pottery, where they would go into the showroom for sale. If Bernard saw one that hadn't sold that he really admired, then he would take it (he would buy it), and it would go into the house.
Warren MacKenzieIn actual fact, I wanted to be an actor, but I was a lawyer, and I was a week away from qualifying and was fired. And that's the day I made an announcement: "Hey, for seven years, you thought I was going to be a lawyer. Well, I'm not. I've just lost my job, and I'm packing my bags and moving to London tomorrow to be an actor."
Gerard ButlerI was born in Tehran at a time when women's rights were deteriorating at a rampant rate. My parents didn't want to raise their daughter in a social, political, and religious climate that was growing increasingly oppressive toward women and girls, so they emigrated to London. But the struggle of the Iranian people was permanently etched in my social consciousness from a young age.
Nazanin BoniadiIn London, nobody comments on what you wear - they think that's not important to you or your state of well-being.
Steven BerkoffThe first Superman film took up a huge chunk of our lives, but it was a wonderful time for us. We were young, my daughter was little, we were filming in London for a year, so we became like a close family.
Margot KidderIn London, it's hard for me to wear anything more colorful than black. When I'm in Rome, I dress up in white. When I'm in Paris, I became a Parisian. Striped T-shirt, Chanel. It's funny!
Alessandra MastronardiIn course of time the Brothers Cowper removed the manufacture of their printing machines from London, to Manchester. There they found skilled and energetic workmen, ready to carry their plans into effect.
James NasmythIt was strange to stand there in front of the mirror and see myself like I was my own best friend, a kid wanted to hang with forever. This was a boy I could travel to the seacoasts with, a boy I'd like to meet up with in foreign cities like Calcutta and London and Brazil, a boy I could trust who also had a good sense of humor and liked smoked oysters from a can and good weed and the occasional 40 ounces of malt. If I was going to be alone for the rest of my life this was the person I wanted to be alone with.
Russell BanksI started in '88 to play House music, it was a huge revolution for me. I went to London and I saw a DJ on stage and that was crazy at the time. I was one of the really respected and famous DJs in Paris, but they would never show me. I was hidden. A DJ on stage and people dancing and facing the DJ, looking at him? I was like 'wow!'
David GuettaNew York is more exciting, I guess, than even Paris or London. New York's the center of something; I don't know what, really - the center of a lot of things. With all its problems and chaos and craziness, it's still a great place to live. I can't see myself living anywhere else.
Robert De NiroAs an actress and comedienne, I'm a huge fan of he theatre and the Tricycle in Kilburn is my favourite in London. I dragged my kids to a performance of 'Twelfth Night' there, where they handed out pizza. Who knew that all it takes to get children interested in Shakespeare is a snack?
Arabella WeirWell, I heard of Sunny Ade, and looks as if his music is gonna be big on a global level, because I was in London the other day and some people asked me to review the album.
Dennis BrownLondon is like no other city I know in its ability to become beautiful. You can suddenly turn a corner and there are odd moments - of light, of weather.
Graham Swift