Popular quotes about London! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 5
I think one of the London Film Festival strengths is that it's set in London but it's not about London. It's about the diversity of this city and it's about world cinema. And that's what London is - London is a place where its identity is always in a state of flux. So, this festival celebrates the way in which it is always changing. That's why London is a fascinating place and that's why the film festival is a fascinating film festival.
Eddie MarsanI've noticed that once you leave London you do kind of become a bit more famous. People in London are a bit too cool for school. It's not so unusual to see someone from London in the street. But outside of London people are a bit more excited to see you and come out and support you.
David WalliamsWhen I moved to London, you could park your motorcycle in the pavement, on the sidewalk. We would stay here and just leave it and go about your business. But now something was sort of encroaching in London. There's cameras everywhere. You can't do anything. You're not allowed to be in a group.
Ewan McGregorThe truth is, that in London it is always a sickly season. Nobody is healthy in London, nobody can be.
Jane AustenI was born in London. I moved to New Zealand when I was really young; I can't remember London. My parents went and did what was supposed to be a one-year O.E. (overseas experience) that turned into a 9 year O.E. and they had two kids.
ThomstonI 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 KhanLondon perpetually attracts, stimulates, gives me a play and a story and a poem, without any trouble, save that of moving my legs through the streets... To walk alone through London is the greatest rest.
Virginia WoolfI 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 BrysonAnd 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 RonsonLondon ... remains a man's city where New York is chiefly a woman's. London has whole streets that cater to men's wants. It has its great solid phalanx of fortress clubs.
Louis KronenbergerWhen I was a little kid it was my dream to go to drama school, but it was never something I thought would happen to me. I was a Jewish girl from North London and things like that don't happen to Jewish girls from North London called Amy Winehouse.
Amy WinehouseIn 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.
Jens LehmannMy dad is a minister and my mum is a worker with the less fortunate and the disabled. They're Nigerian natives. Their first language is Yoruba, and their second language is English. My mum and dad moved to London when they had my eldest sister. They started a life in London as immigrants, and they built up from there. They're no actors in my family, but there are definitely animated black people in my family.
John BoyegaWhen I was a teenager in Iceland people would throw rocks and shout abuse at me because they thought I was weird. I never got that in London no matter what I wore.
BjorkIโm 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 MoranWhat 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.
Steven KnightI never dreamed I'd like any city as well as London. San Francisco is exciting, moody, exhilarating. I even love the muted fogs.
Julie ChristieWell 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 CondellThe 2012 Olympics is going to cost ยฃ8 billion which is a lot of money. It'll probably bankrupt London. But you can't put a price on two bronze medals in cycling.
Jimmy CarrI have a driver in London because I am slightly dyslexic and cannot drive in the U.K.; after all, the traffic runs the opposite way to that in the United States.
Tom FordIf I'd stayed on in London and carried on going to literary parties, it would have wrecked me as a writer.
Colin WilsonWhen 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.
Charles DickensThe next General Election isn't about electing yet another Labour or Tory MP to join the hundreds of other Labour or Tory MPs in London. It will be about electing a candidate who will put solving people's problems before scoring political points. Someone who will fight for the future of our communities here in Clwyd West.
Llyr Huws GruffyddIt is to create the best Games the world has ever seen by unlocking the UK's unrivalled passion for sport, by delivering the best Games for athletes to compete in, by showcasing London's unmatched cultural wealth and diversity and by creating a real and lasting legacy.
Sebastian CoeWhen 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.
Aung San Suu KyiI've missed London so much for its fashion. No disrespect to the girls in Manchester, but some really do look like clones - there's a lot of hair extensions and fake tans. You're free to experiment down here.
Kaya ScodelarioWe launched it in the London branch - phenomenal sausages, incredible eggs, homemade baked beans, black pudding - and it's something I wanted to bring to Dubai.
Gordon RamsayI'm not sure where I'm from! I was born in London. My father's from Ghana but lives in Saudi Arabia. My mother's Nigerian but lives in Ghana. I grew up in Boston.
Taiye SelasiI'm living on coffee, cigarettes and hospitality food. My bags and things are all over this hotel room in Dallas, but the scene could easily be in London, Paris, New York of LA. My eyes are burning, my knees hurt and I hate to say it, but a certain and vital part of my nether region is beginning to smell like peanut butter. Welcome to life on tour.
Corey TaylorThey never were planning to be here. All my family are going to London because they wanted to go to the big one. There was never any showdown - there wouldnt be.
Charlotte ChurchTheres just a big group of actors in London. There are new ones coming in all the time, who are looking for work, and established actors who are interested in working and like to work. To be a working actor in England is a life.
Rebecca EatonI spent a lot of time with a real detective, a lady detective inspector who was the only female detective inspector in the whole of East London. She and I hung out a lot. She showed me what she did and I spent time with her. So, [she was] a lot of the inspiration for the way I dressed and sometimes the dialogue in those interview scenes where we're cross examining and questioning the youths and trying to get a confession out of them.
Emily MortimerThe London streets are paths of loveliness; the very omnibuses look like colored archangels, their laps filled full of little trustful souls.
Evelyn UnderhillWe would rather see London laid in ruins and ashes than that it should be tamely and abjectly enslaved.
Winston ChurchillI 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.
William MonahanLife in the [London] suburb is richer at the lower levels. At these levels the people are not self-conscious at all, they are at liberty to be as eccentric as they please, they do not know that they are eccentric.
Stevie SmithI 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 MillerThe Jews believed Jerusalem to be the centre. I have seen a kratometric chart designed to show that the city of Philadelphia was in the same thermic belt, and, by inference, in the same belt of empire, as the cities of Athens, Rome, and London. It was drawn by a patriotic Philadelphian, and was examined with pleasure, under his showing, by the inhabitants of Chestnut Street. But, when carried to Charleston, to New Orleans, and to Boston, it somehow failed to convince the ingenious scholars of all those capitals.
Ralph Waldo EmersonI take my hat off to the ladies. The amount of grooming-plucking and shaving and all the other things men never have to do. I went down and spent time with transvestites in London in the clubs and all that. Got an insight to that world, and it's a mad world, but they are very warm and very open people. It was a great experience.
Cillian MurphyI cannot for the life of me understand what the Minister Of Transport does every day. He goes to the office at 9am and leaves at 5pm and the traffic in London is still horrendous.
Delia SmithI like the little bit of distance that London affords me and I like living in a world capital. I like having the culture at my fingertips.
Cillian MurphyI 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 McAdamsWhat 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 MaddenIn 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 Butler