Quotes About London

London had always been different. There is the old saying that Britain is ten years behind America, and the country as a whole is ten years behind London. If you have a Mayor of London working for jobs and growth and strong businesses, that is going to create opportunities for businesses and people in Burnley or Hull and places all over the UK.

The most wonderful thing in life is to be delirious and the most wonderful kind of delirium is being in love. In the morning mist, hazy and amorous, London was delirious. London squinted as it floated along, milky pink, without caring where it was going.

London life was very full and exciting [...] But in London there would be no greenhouse with a glossy tank, and no apple-room, and no potting-shed, earthy and warm, with bunches of poppy heads hanging from the ceiling, and sunflower seeds in a wooden box, and bulbs in thick paper bags, and hanks of tarred string, and lavender drying on a tea-tray.

We 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.

Famously in 1936, Oswald Mosley led a march of his British black shirts through a mostly Jewish neighborhood, in the east end of London. What resulted was what they called the "Battle of Cable Street", where Oswald Mosley and his fascists basically got the snot beaten out of them when East London rose up against them and beat them up.

I studied music all the way through college, but as soon as I graduated from university, I got straight into London and got straight into film music. So really my experiences have been being around the orchestras in London and being around the people who work in film music.

I love London and Los Angeles equally. I was born and brought up London and then I went to Los Angeles as a teenager to stay with my sister Joan. So I feel I belong to both.

Rioting has always been a London tradition. It has been since the early Middle Ages. There's hardly a spate of years that goes by without violent rioting of one kind or another. They happen so frequently that they are almost part of London's texture.

In London, people can be so... well, it's not even a case of people being unkind or unfriendly. You just don't make any contact in London. You go from A to B with your eyes on the pavement.

In England everything is liberalised. Within certain boundaries and rules everybody can do what he likes. Maybe London's society has a different tempo, a different dynamic. London is fast, productive, creative but it is not England. If you want to transfer that to football, you could say: in the four big English clubs and maybe in the one or two behind them there is a top level. Everything that comes after that rather mirrors English society. It's honest, fair and hard, sometimes also fast, but not always so perfect.

Not 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.

I'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.

Many of my favourite hotels are in London. I like the Covent Garden Hotel and I stayed at Blakes last time I was in London. I like the feeling of warmth and homeliness that you get from both of those places.

Dad was the first man I fell in love with. He was a very funny man. He grew up in the East End of London and was very dynamic, and I understood why my mother fell in love with him.

One of Dickens' biggest influences was the growth of London as a Victorian city, and the extremes being created as it expanded.

The one enemy in the world that America has is England. But then, England is the great land of Christian civilization, and it may not be a thing to be much wondered at that our Americans whom we send to represent us in London become in a short time somewhat civilized, and learn to love those who hate them, bless those that curse them, and do good to those that persecute and calumniate them.

What happened was I was invited to meet Tom [Hardy] to discuss a project that he had in his mind about an adventurer who returns to England from Africa with secrets and with a history, and the original idea was set some 80 years later than it is now. But in the conversation I really took to the idea and I'd wanted for a while to set something in 1830 and 1840 in London, so it struck a chord.

I was very aggressive as a child. At primary school in London my attitude was 'If you don't do what I say, I'll knowk you out', and I was eventually expelled for fighting.

London on your own actually seems more exotic than Egypt on a tour.

Well 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.

Go 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.

When they took a young man into Tellson's London house, they hid him somewhere till he was old. They kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until he had the full Tellson flavour and blue-mould upon him. Then only was he permitted to be seen, spectacularly poring over large books, and casting his breeches and gaiters into the general weight of the establishment.

An actor who knows his business ought to be able to make the London telephone directory sound enthralling.

How is it having more control if there are businesses from China, India, America choosing Germany and France over London?

The objective is to do things well in London.

When I was in London a Kachin youth criticized me for not condemning the Burmese military for their offensive in Kachin State. I answered "condemnation is not the solution." We want to build reconciliation, not condemnation.

I don't think I'd live in London unless you paid me. Nine figures would be nice.

Kingston is so chill. He goes with me everywhere. He's been to every studio in L.A., New York, London. He lives up to his name - total Rasta boy. He gives me a real balance. You can go 100 miles an hour, but you still have to stop to hang out with him.

I'm a London lad, but I'm fascinated by America. I want to take a motorcycling trip across the country and see those wide open spaces.

[London is] one of the best cities in the world. There is just so much culture there and so much history and so much diversity. It's just a perfect place to grow up. I studied at the Guildhall every Saturday so I'd always be in town every weekend doing that. I was kind of a city boy really.

The things that prey on my mind in London seem to disappear as soon as I find myself in a different environment. Survival mode kicks in.

Moving to London was a culture shock, but in a really good way. I'm more aware now, and I'm less trusting of people in the music industry.

I cut London Boulevard pretty aggressively, but I liked the transitions and the elliptical feel that I got. It's not an exceptionally easy film to follow. You have to know that the paparazzo looks like Mark David Chapman. He hasn't got an expositional sign on him.

The Southbank Centre Unlimited Festival was a distinct moment in time, an amazing counterpoint to the London 2012 Paralympics. There is no question that a major shift in perspective is taking place, that the world is waking up and greeting - as if for the first time - the extraordinary community of people with disability.

I went to the big Picasso retrospective at the Tate in the sixties, and I think I went to an Andy Warhol retrospective at the Tate in the sixties, too. My mother was very good at taking me to things like that. We lived in Reading, but we went on these cultural trips to London.

The space and light up there in Norfolk is wonderfully peaceful. I find myself doing funny things like gardening, and cooking, which I rarely do in London.

If you don't need to quit drinking, you shouldn't quit drinking. I used to really love to drink, and especially living in London, it's just built for drinking.

Glaswegian ebola patient moved to London's Royal Free Hospital. Not so independent when it matters most are we jocksville?

A lot of pubs in London are now faceless, expensive yuppy bars. Not like when I was growing up. The pub used to be, and should be, the pillar of community.

I was about 16 when punk started to happen. It was so exciting. You had a social depression going on in the U.K. There was a sanitation strike. London was really grim, gray. You had Margaret Thatcher coming in. It was a really revolutionary time.

In 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.

In 1897, troops from the greatest empire the world had ever seen marched down London’s mall for Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee. Seventy years later, Britain had government health care, a government-owned car industry, massive government housing, and it was a shriveled high-unemployment socialist basket-case living off the dwindling cultural capital of its glorious past. In 1945, America emerged from the Second World War as the preeminent power on earth. Seventy years later . . . Let’s not go there.

The most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money, and the most repellent man of my acquaintance is a philanthropist who has spent nearly a quarter of a million upon the London poor.

In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement.

I'm a real Londoner. We have very grey weather in London, and I think it encourages a very eclectic and crazy fashion sense. I mix high-street stuff with more high-end fashion and vintage.

I knew if I stayed in London my whole life would be dancing. I'd won almost every major title you can. I thought 'This really isn't my passion. I really want to sing,' and I knew I wouldn't be able to if I stayed there.

I used all diligence to arrive at London and therefore I now gave my crew a certificate under my hand, of my free and willing return, without persuasion or force by any one or more of them.

London has always been a haven for victims of cruelty, and been improved by them. Yet I can see it changing now. Outsiders are demonised, there are little bits of legislation, people are scared.