Winston Churchill
Classy insults
If you love clever use of words these classy insults from a former era might tickle your fancy and brighten your day when the news is grim and the weather forecast is on the highest alert.
George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill:
“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend, if you have one.”
Winston Churchill:
“Cannot possibly attend first night, I will attend the second … If there is one.”
A member of Parliament to Disraeli:
“Sir, you will either die on the gallows, or of some unspeakable disease.”
Disraeli:
“That depends, Sir, whether I embrace your policies or your mistress.”
Walter Kerr:
“He had delusions of adequacy.”
Clarence Darrow:
“I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.”
William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway:
“He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”
Moses Hadas:
“Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I’ll waste no time reading it.”
Mark Twain:
“I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.”
Oscar Wilde:
“He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.”
Stephen Bishop:
“I feel so miserable without you; it’s almost like having you here.”
John Bright:
“He is a self-made man and worships his creator.”
Irvin S. Cobb:
“I’ve just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.”
Samuel Johnson:
“He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others.”
Paul Keating:
“He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up.”
Charles, Count Talleyrand:
“In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily.”
Forrest Tucker:
“He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.”
Mark Twain:
“Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?”
Mae West:
“His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.”
Oscar Wilde:
“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.”
Andrew Lang:
“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts … for support rather than illumination.”
Billy Wilder:
“He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.”
Groucho Marx:
“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.”
Winston Churchill:
‘He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”
Sometimes it’s enough just to have a good laugh.
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- “His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.”
– Mae West
- “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.”
– Oscar Wilde
- “He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts… For support rather than illumination.”
– Andrew Lang (1844-1912)
- “He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.”
– Billy Wilder
- “I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.”
– Groucho Marx.
22.”He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”
Quotable quotes from the writing journals
When the news is dominated by politics, and right royal revelations, we could probably all do with something to make us smile, so I thought I’d brighten your day with assorted wise or amusing quotes. It’s a long time since I shared entertaining snippets from the literary journals, but, as 2019 draws to its end, it’s probably timely to give you a resume of my favourites, all taken from the Society of Authors’ official magazine: The Author, throughout 2018/19. Names in brackets are the people who submitted these gems.
A definition of stories
‘… wonderful made-up people whose tangled stories are tattooed on woodpulp’ (Richard Smyth)
Wry humour
A Wilde Wit competition asked for original quotes that sound like something Oscar Wilde might have said. The winner came up with the two top entries:
‘I’m frequently misquoted – often accurately.’
‘An insult from the right person can be as agreeable as any compliment.’ (Andrew Taylor)
Dubious advantage
Ian McEwan‘s youngest son was obliged to read his father’s 1997 novel, Enduring Love, for his A-level course. As part of his studies he had to submit an essay on the book. The author gave him a little private tutorial on it and told him the main points to consider. Unfortunately his English teacher disagreed fundamentally and the lad got nothing more than a C! Just goes to show how subjective reading is, huh? (Andrew Taylor)
Reporting on research into older people writing
‘… to forget self in a worthwhile project is like a tonic. Being completely immersed in what you are doing, having the mind fully engaged, having a purpose in life, waking up with something to look forward to, and knowing you are still doing something useful to, and valued by, society – these things contribute massively to a happy, healthy and fulfilled old age.’ (Robin Lloyd-Jones)
Occupational hazards
There’s currently a move to encourage authors to abandon their too comfortable writing chair, but did you know the idea has an august pedigree?
Ernest Hemingway, Winston Churchill, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Vladimir Nabokov and Soren Kierekegaard all worked standing up. (Alice Jolly)
Unsung wives
Leo Tolstoy‘s wife Sonya made eight fair copies of different versions of War and Peace, bore 13 children, and even worked on the manuscript in bed while recovering from puerperal fever, the childbirth infection that killed many women. Yet, how many folk laud her efforts? (Karen Christensen)
The place of books in our lives
‘After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.’ (Philip Pullman)
Reader appeal
Waterstones in Swansea tweeted a message in 2018 that went viral:
‘Doors closed 15 minutes ago. As we do every evening, we’ve turned all the books upside down so the words don’t fall out overnight. It may seem like a silly waste of time, but ask yourself this: when did you last see piles of words on a Waterstones’ carpet? That’s right – NEVER.’ (Andrew Taylor)
It’s a joy to read a publication written by people who really know how to write!
Inhabiting characters
Fragile: approach with care!
I remember going to an event years ago, where the audience walked past several actors in various poses. We were advised not to speak to them as they were already ‘in character’. And we were subsequently treated to a masterclass in how they achieved this level of identification and immersion in order to project the final images which had us mesmerised. Fascinating insights.
And I’m sure we can all appreciate how thoroughly good actors can inhabit their characters when we see the same person in completely different roles. Just think Meryl Streep – literally Oscar winning!: Mrs Thatcher in The Iron Lady, Emmeline Pankhurst in Suffragette, Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada. She is these women for us! How does she do it? ‘Acting is not about being someone different. It’s finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there,’ she says. But the end result is utterly convincing on our end of the process.
Even in films where a well-known person of our time is being represented – King George VI, the Queen, Winston Churchill, Ghandi – a good actor can make us suspend disbelief by somehow capturing the essence of the character; a style of speech or dress, a gait, a look, an idiosyncratic habit. And to do that, they delve into archives, study mannerisms, learn speech patterns and dialects, anything that will increase empathy and understanding of who exactly such persons were/are. Just watch something like The Crown, The King’s Speech, The Queen, and you can see the little foibles and eccentricities that help the identification process in a huge cast of well known faces.
To an extent an author too, needs to get inside the skin of their characters, in order to make them believable and relatable. Unless we care, we don’t want to read on. In my case, I want to make them real enough for the reader also to feel their pain, empathise with their situation, identify with their challenges and choices. To ask themselves: What would I have done? With my current book, this has meant immersing myself in the psychological depths of a new mother struggling to cope; an ambitious businessman torn by divided loyalties; health care professionals grapplling with the threat of making a wrong call; a clever manipulative mind … no wonder it’s exhausting and depressing and stressful at times! Even now, when I’m reading and re-reading and reading again to make sure every dot and nuance is as good as I can make it before Killing me Gently is published. Perhaps authors too should have mentors and support networks built in to their job descriptions. And a label: Fragile: approach with care.
A mystery inside an enigma
We’re all rather preoccupied with Russia and Syria and the UK’s responses to their activities at the moment, aren’t we? What a burden for our politicians to carry. Poisonings on the streets of the UK, chemical weapons used in Syria, volatile tweets, warning missiles, brutal leaders, conspiracy theories … sobering and scary stuff. Complicated still further by the fact that some at least of the detail is unknown, distorted, speculative, suspected, misguided. Reminds me of Winston Churchill‘s famous quote way back when: Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
Once you start seriously thinking about these troubling scenarios, an uneasy kind of sense of foreboding can hang around, colouring your day.
And that’s exactly how I’m feeling at the moment most of the time. Because, on top of real and major global conflict that could affect us all, I’m personally living with doubt, fear, secrecy, suspicion, in my fictional world, and it’s seriously affecting my mood and my stress levels. It wakes me up at night. It’s hanging over me while I peel vegetables. It plays in my mind while I tramp trough the spring countryside. It haunts my waking thoughts and my troubled dreams.
My main character is in the frame for a series of very perplexing happenings. Her husband, sister, sister-in-law, friend, an as yet unknown protagonist, could all possibly be implicated in some way or another. Who exactly can be trusted? Fact and fantasy are getting confused. The threat is building. The options are reducing. The risk is mounting. Fear is taking over. The professionals are getting more and more on edge. And even I am not entirely sure who to believe! It’s shiver-up-the-spine exciting but also distinctly mood lowering.
So advice is, stay well clear of me if you can, till this situation has resolved itself.
(Acknowledgement: Image courtesy of Iqoncept Dreamstime.com)