Popular quotes about London! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 3
I was every Londoner's stereotypical idea of a brash, vulgar American. When I got here, it turned out that London was the Wild West, and New York was like London at the height of the Victorian era, in which everyone was far more obsessed with table manners and status-climbing than they are in London. In London, everyone was just crawling over this blizzard of cocaine. Here, if you have more than a glass of wine with your meal, people refer you to Alcoholics Anonymous.
Toby YoungLondon College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, offers the range of subjects that help young designers to arrange the underpinnings that are necessary to get from zero to 10. The hardest part is the beginning, understanding your passion and making the decision that whatever it takes, that's what you're going to do. London College of Fashion shows them what they must do and helps them to find their goal.
Carmen Dell'OreficeThe 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 DodsonLondon Fashion Week is so different from any of the others. Compared to the strictness in New York, London seems freer from commercial constraints. Truer to the process, to street style, to a sense of humour.
Alexa ChungI would use the power of procurement, I would say if you want to do business with the mayor of London, you must pay your staff a London Living Wage.
Sadiq KhanI 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 BoothAnd I remember that about three years before that, her first record had come out. And I just remember really liking this one song off it called "In My Bed" and being a little bit enamored. This, you know, this young kind of Jewish girl from North London, you know, I have the same thing - from a Jewish family from North London - with this incredible voice.
Mark RonsonI grew up in London, and that's where I spend most of my time. Unless I have a really good reason not to be, I'll always be in London.
Douglas BoothTwo successive commissioners in London police were fired by the mayor that came into office. That doesn't mean the police in London is not independent and does not exercise powers. Ultimately it is the political executive that has to answer.
P. ChidambaramI'm a big fan of London in the summertime. English people are dependent on weather to change our attitudes, and, provided it's a decent summer, everyone's spirits are uplifted and the whole place is in bloom. It's a magical transformation. London in the summer, going to see bands play outside, watching football.
Ed WestwickThe mayors fund for London will be a streamlined vehicle for getting money from the wealth creating sector to communities across London that are facing hardship and deprivation and are the victims of crime.
Boris JohnsonFinally, there's a sense in which I look at this Westminster village and London intelligentsia as an outsider.
Diane AbbottIโm going to lie this one right on the line, right here, right now: Iโm pro big pants. Strident feminism NEEDS big pants. Really big. Iโm currently wearing a pair that could have been used as a fire blanket to put out the Great Fire of London at any point during the first 48 hours or so. They extend from the top of my thigh to my belly button, and effectively double up as a second property that I can escape to at weekends. If I were going to run for parliament, it would be solely on a platform of โGet Women In Massive Grundieโsโ.
Caitlin MoranLondon 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 ParkerWell it's a gloomy, rainy old day to be here in London, but it could be worse; I could be in Saudi Arabia where men are men, and women are cattle.
Pat CondellI like BBC news, I like some London news because you can get it earlier then anywhere else. I like Charlie Rose a lot.
Brian GrazerAnd as I grew older, I then auditioned for the Royal Academy of Music in London, and they said, well, no, we won't accept you, because we haven't a clue - you know - of the future of a so-called 'deaf' musician. And I just couldn't quite accept that.
Evelyn GlennieLondon is one of the few cities where people still dress properly and fashion exists. Every day I see women who've thought about their outfits. They've picked out the bag, put on proper shoes. ... Do you know how rare it is in parts of America to actually see 'an outfit'? France? I don't want to be anti-French but there isn't a more unattractive group of people on the streets.
Tom FordHow is it having more control if there are businesses from China, India, America choosing Germany and France over London?
Sadiq KhanIn London, I really like going to the Mandarin Oriental. They can even do my feet without tickling me.
Lara StoneAnd when midst fallen London, they survey The stone where Alexander's ashes lay, Shall own with humbled pride the lesson must By Time's slow finger written in the dust.
Anna Letitia BarbauldAn 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 UpdikeAs to London we must console ourselves with the thought that if life outside is less poetic than it was in the days of old, inwardly its poetry is much deeper.
Goldwin SmithIn those sticky summer nights in South London our windows stay open and our tiny apartment becomes our secret garden. The magic of the secret garden is that it exists in our imagination. There are no limits, no borderlines. The secret garden leads to the marigolds of Mogadishu and the magnolias of Kingston and when the heat turns us sticky and sweet and unwilling to be claimed by defeat we own the night. We own our bodies. We own our lives.
Diriye OsmanYouโre not the only one who calls them that; the other Downworlders do the same,โ said Will. โI discovered that fact while investigating the symbol. I must have carried that knife through a hundred Downworld haunts, searching for someone who might recognize it. I offered a reward for information. Eventually the name of the Dark Sisters came to my ears.โ โDownworld?โ Tessa echoed, puzzled. โIs that a place in London?โ โNever mind that,โ said Will. โIโm boasting of my investigative skills, and I would prefer to do it without interruption. Where was I?
Cassandra ClareLet us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downwards through the mud and slush of opinion and tradition, and pride and prejudice, appearance and delusion, through the alluvium which covers the globe, through poetry and philosophy and religion, through church and state, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, till we come to a hard bottom that rocks in place which we can call reality and say, "This is and no mistake.
Henry David ThoreauThe London streets are paths of loveliness; the very omnibuses look like colored archangels, their laps filled full of little trustful souls.
Evelyn UnderhillOn my Instagram, I'm always keeping a record of things being pulled down in Soho and shutters being closed. Every city - and London more than anywhere - has got to be a vibrant mix of all different things. We can't allow it to become a monoculture.
Marc AlmondI don't think there's any money to be made doing something that's that contemporary without having a spin on it. If there's a London riots film with zombies, that'd have more chance.
Michael Caton-JonesIn the '70s, if anything, it was a more interesting time in fashion. It was a time when things were changing, especially in London.
Rei KawakuboThe technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical consequences is hay. ... It was hay that allowed populations to grow and civilizations to flourish among the forests of Northern Europe. Hay moved the greatness of Rome to Paris and London, and later to Berlin and Moscow and New York.
Freeman DysonIt must be said that Brighton, unlike London, makes driving seem very appealing. Instead of glowering faces and angry horns on all sides, we have the coast road in front of us and the Sussex Downs just 10 minutes behind us.
Julie BurchillI did get to shadow some amazing brain surgeons, a female brain surgeon in Toronto, another surgeon in London. And then we had a surgeon onset [of Doctor Strange] every day. So and he taught me to do sutures and was practicing on turkey breasts, raw turkey breasts.
Rachel McAdamsEver since I was little it was programmed into me that London is where great theatre occurs and all the big shows you love start there.
Zach BraffWhat inspires me is what I see people wearing on the streets of the world from New York to London and beyond. I get my ideas and inspiration from pounding the pavement all over the world. Today, fashion is dictated by individual style. To me, the fashion of the future is anything that a young guy or girl feels good wearing as long as it's put together in the right way.
Steve MaddenNew York, like London, seems to be a cloacina [toilet] of all the depravities of human nature.
Thomas JeffersonIn 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 have to admit, I am aware of my Latin roots now. In the past, people couldn't place me. They thought that I was Danish or English or French. They never got that I am Italian. I'm not typical, maybe because my visual education was very mixed. There was a lot of London in my aesthetic: The Face, i-D, British music, and a lot of British fashion . . . But I really enjoy this contrast. I can go from Lady Gaga to Brian Eno in a split second.
Italo ZucchelliI've lived in London, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, New York, and Turin. But New York is my favorite city. It has so much energy, so much toughness.
Lapo ElkannI came to live in Shepperton in 1960. I thought: the future isn't in the metropolitan areas of London. I want to go out to the new suburbs, near the film studios. This was the England I wanted to write about, because this was the new world that was emerging.
J. G. BallardLondon's where I was brought up. It's where my heart is and where I get my inspiration.
Alexander McQueenWhether I'm in London, Sydney or Hong Kong, it makes no difference. There is always someone who knows me. I must be one of the most unloneliest people in the world!
Roy OrbisonI love the way girls in London dress; it's so different to the American 'blow-dry and immaculate grooming' thing.
Rachel Weisz