Andrea Levy Quotes

My beloved son Thomas did caution, when first I set out to flow this tale upon the world, that although they may not be felt like a fist or a whip, words have a power that can nevertheless cower even the largest man to gibbering tears.

Australia smelt of apples. Ripe, green, crisp apples. A smell so sharp and sweet it made my teeth tingle.

Why you wan' the whole world when ya have a likkle piece a hope here? Stay. Stay and fight, man. Fight till you look 'pon what you wan' see.

Paved with gold, no - but, yes, diamonds appear on the ground in the rain

He looked so pained that I dreamed of taking his hands and making him dance

If truly tested, how would we react?

Gilbert: How Clark Gable turn every women's head so? Foolish young English girls would see a movie star in every GI with the same Yankee-doodle voice. Glamour in US privates named Jed, Buck or Chip, with their easy-come-by-gifts and Uncle Sam sweet-talk. Dreamboats in hooligans from Delaware or Arizona with fingernails that still carried soil from home, and eyes that crossed with any attempt at reading. Heart-throbs from men like those in the tea-shop, who dated their very close relatives and knew cattle as their mental equal.

We went up and up into the heavens until people were just dots below us. As we hung right at the top
the twinkling electric lights below mingling with the stars
Father said something I will never forget. He said, 'See here, Queenie. Look around. You've got the whole world at your feet, lass.

Caslon or Garamond or Baskerville is shouted as the compositors search for as many cases of these types as can be found. But never is there enough of those metal letters. The apprentice is charged to clean the ones just used so he can distribute a constant supply, lest a compositor be forced into some fancy spelling for the want of Es. With his uppercase upper and his lowercase lower, the compositor, standing at his frame with his stick held in his hand, like an artist with his palette, looks first to the handwritten copy, before click, click, clicking metal letters into a line. Then, line by line, each page is built up upon a form and the metal words are banged home with a mallet, tightened and spaced with slugs of wood, then locked within this frame by the teeth of quoins. And when the page is set, 'Proof" is yelled at the door.

The very notion of Great Britain's "greatness" is bound up with Empire,' the cultural theorist, Stuart Hall, once wrote: 'Euro-scepticism and littel Englander nationalism could hardly survive if people understood whose sugar flowed through English blood , and rotted English teeth.