Alan Sillitoe Quotes

For it was Saturday night, the best and bingiest glad-time of the week, one of the fifty-two holidays in the slow-turning Big Wheel of the year, a violent preamble to a prostrate Sabbath. Piled up passions were exploded on Saturday night, and the effect of a week's monotonous graft in the factory was swilled out of your system in a burst of goodwill. You followed the motto of 'be drunk and be happy,' kept your crafty arms around female waists, and felt the beer going beneficially down into the elastic capacity of your guts. ~ Alan Sillitoe

Once a rebel, always a rebel. You can't help being one. You can't deny that. And it's best to be a rebel so as to show 'em it don't pay to try to do you down. Factories and labour exchanges and insurance offices keep us alive and kicking - so they say - but they're booby-traps and will suck you under like sinking-sands if you're not careful. Factories sweat you to death, labour exchanges talk you to death, insurance and income tax offices milk money from your wage packets and rob you to death. And if you're still left with a tiny bit of life in your guts after all this boggering about, the army calls you up and you get shot to death. And if you're clever enough to stay out of the army you get bombed to death. Ay, by God, it's a hard life if you don't weaken, if you don't stop that bastard government from grinding your face in the muck, though there ain't much you can do about it unless you start making dynamite to blow their four-eyed clocks to bits. ~ Alan Sillitoe

Everything's dead, but good, because it's dead before coming alive, not dead after being alive. That's how I look at it. ~ Alan Sillitoe

And when the governor kept saying how 'we' wanted you to do this; and 'we' wanted you to do that, I kept looking round for the other blokes, wondering how many of them there was. Of course, I knew there were thousands of them, but as far as I knew only one was in the room. And there are thousands of them, all over the poxeaten country, in shops, offices, railway stations, cars, houses, pubs - In-law blokes like you and them, all on the watch for Out-law blokes like me and us - and waiting to phone for the coppers as soon as we make a false move. And it'll always be there, I'll tell you that now, because I haven't finished making all my false moves yet, and I dare say I won't until I kick the bucket. ~ Alan Sillitoe

I was neither glad nor unhappy to see her, but maybe that's what shock does, because I was surprised, that I will say. ~ Alan Sillitoe

We know you weren't in the house', he said, starting up again, cranking himself with the handle. They always say 'We', 'We', never 'I' 'I' - as if they feel braver and righter knowing there's a lot of them against only one. ~ Alan Sillitoe

Well, it's a good life and a good world, all said and done, if you don't weaken. ~ Alan Sillitoe

I'm me and nobody else; and whatever people think I am or say I am, that's what I'm not, because they don't know a bloody thing about me. ~ Alan Sillitoe

Government wars aren't my wars; they've got nowt to do with me, because my own war's all that I'll ever be bothered about. ~ Alan Sillitoe

You can always rely on a society of equals taking it out on the women. ~ Alan Sillitoe

Hope to the very end, he told himself, even when you've slipped into the fires of Hell and the flames are searing your guts. ~ Alan Sillitoe

Whatever people think I am or say I am, that's what I am not. ~ Alan Sillitoe

They sat as if the weight of the world had in this minute been lifted from them both and left them dumb with surprise. But this lasted only for the moment. Arthur held her murderously tight, as if to vanquish her spirit even in the first short contest. But she responded to him, as if she would break him first. It was stalemate, and they sought relief from the great decision they had just brought upon themselves. He spoke to her softly, and she nodded her head to his words without knowing what they meant. Neither did Arthur know what he was saying; both transmission and reception were drowned, and they broke through to the opened furrows of the earth. ~ Alan Sillitoe

You should think about nobody and go your own way, not on a course marked out for you by people holding mugs of water and bottles of iodine in case you fall and cut yourself so that they can pick you up - even if you want to stay where you are - and get you moving again. ~ Alan Sillitoe

It was hard to understand, and all I knew was that you had to run, run, run without knowing why you were running, but on you went through fields you didn't understand and into woods that made you afraid, over hills without knowing you'd been up and down, and shooting across streams that would have cut the heart out of you had you fallen into them. And the winning post was no end to it, even though crowds might be cheering you in, because on you had to go before you got your breath back, and the only time you stopped really was when you tripped over a tree trunk and broke your neck or fell into a disused well and stayed dead in the darkness forever. ~ Alan Sillitoe

If you went through life refusing all the bait dangled in front of you, that would be no life at all. No changes would be made and you would have nothing to fight against. Life would be dull as ditchwater. ~ Alan Sillitoe

So as soon as I tell myself I'm the first man ever to be dropped into the world, and as soon as I take that first flying leap into the frosty grass of an early morning when even birds haven't the heart to whistle, I get to thinking, and that's what I like. I go my rounds in a dream, turning at lane or footpath corners without knowing I'm turning, leaping brooks without knowing they're there, and shouting good morning to the early cow-milker without seeing him. It's a treat being a long-distance runner, out in the world by yourself with not a soul to make you bad-tempered or tell you what to do. ~ Alan Sillitoe

Don't let the bastards get you down. ~ Alan Sillitoe

He'd never had much to do with the police in the Nottinghamshire village where he lived. They existed at a distance, as it were, and Joshua's life hadn't led him closer than that. By accident his actions had been law-abiding. ~ Alan Sillitoe

Every little kid has always wanted to be a race car driver. This gets some of that out. ~ David Alan Grier

Nothing's that simple, not even things that are simply awful. ~ Alan Moore

I think that the Occupy movement is, in one sense, the public saying that they should be the ones to decide who's too big to fail. ~ Alan Moore

Things have got to add up to 100 points. The script is part of it, the character is part of it, the people I'm working with is the third part of it - and any combination of the three has got to add up to 100 points. ~ Alan Arkin

For me, I find that even though I've accomplished a few things in my life, looking back on accomplishments doesn't give me a sense of satisfaction. ~ Alan Alda

It was exciting and intellectually gratifying to speculate on what might lie waiting in the black gulfs when one was behind the business end of a telescope, quite another to do so isolated on an unpleasant little speck of a world such as this, confronted by a ship of non-human manufacture that uncomfortably resembled a growth instead of a familiar device for manipulating and overcoming the neat laws of physics. ~ Alan Dean Foster

I'll work overtime to open the doors of opportunity to industry and commerce. ~ Alan Autry

She got out and shut the door without looking back, picking her way through the snow to the black wooden door in the college wall. At least she hadn't told him not to follow. He watched as she carefully brushed the snow off the latch with her rolled umbrella before touching it with her suede gloves. She left the door half open behind her. He followed. When he reached the door he saw she had paused on the garden path leading to her hall and was doing something in the snow with the tip of her umbrella. Still not looking back, she moved on without waiting for him. When he reached the spot he saw that she had written 'I love you' in the snow. It was that night, he believed ever after, that she became pregnant. ~ Alan Judd

The thing I'd really like to see is the old London Bridge, with all the old buildings around it like Shakespeare's Globe. I'd like to walk along that. Don't worry, I won't get drunk and fall in. ~ Alan Davies

Logic, intelligence, and reason are satisfied, but the heart goes hungry. ~ Alan W. Watts

I can't find anything in the Constitution that says you prefer the life of the mother, or the convenience of the mother if it's an abortion by choice, over the potential life of the fetus. Look, I think women, if they're required to not have abortions, could die and could - so I favor a woman's right to choose. ~ Alan Dershowitz

A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God. ~ Alan Perlis

The Art of Being: A state of wholeness in which the mind functions freely and easily, without the sensation of a second mind or ego standing over it with a club. ~ Alan Watts

A conversation between a person of my age and one of hers is like a map of a maze: There are things that each of us knows, and that each of us knows the other knows, that can be talked about. But there are things that each of us knows that the other doesn't know we know, which must not be spoken of, no matter what. Because of our ages, and for reasons of decency, there are what Daffy would refer to as taboos: forbidden topics which we may stroll among like islands of horse dung in the road that, although perfectly evident to both of us, must not be mentioned or kicked at any cost.
It's a strange world when you come right down to it. ~ Alan Bradley

The future depends on what choices we make.... ~ I. Alan Appt

There is some confusion as to what magic actually is. I think this can be cleared up if you just look at the very earliest descriptions of magic. Magic in its earliest form is often referred to as "the art". I believe this is completely literal. I believe that magic is art and that art, whether it be writing, music, sculpture, or any other form is literally magic. ~ Alan Moore

To understand music, you must listen to it. But so long as you are thinking, "I am listening to this music," you are not listening. ~ Alan Watts

Apply analysis when appropriate, but keep it on a short leash when joy beckons. ~ Alan Cohen

If a man seeks the Buddha, that man loses the Buddha. ~ Alan W. Watts

Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot. ~ Alan Jay Lerner

Will these millions of children, for generations upon future generations, know that some of their atoms cycled through this woman? [ ... ] Will they feel what she felt in her life, will their memories have flickering strokes of her memories, will they recall that moment long ago when she stood by the window, guilt ridden and confused, and watched as the tadr bird circled the cistern? No, it is not possible. [ ... ] But I will let them have their own brief glimpse of the Void, just at that moment they pass from living to dead, from animate to inanimate, from consciousness to that which has no consciousness. For a moment, they will understand infinity. ~ Alan Lightman

When you look out of your eyes at nature happening out there ... You're looking at you.. ~ Alan Watts

used today are wreaking havoc on all of us, particularly on young children whose brains, immune systems, reproductive systems, and lungs are growing rapidly. "We have abundant ~ Alan Bell

The greater the scientist, the more he is impressed with his ignorance of reality, and the more he realizes that his laws and labels, descriptions and definitions, are the products of his own thought. They help him to use the world for purposes of his own devising rather than understand and explain it. ~ Alan Watts

A good scientific law or theory is falsifiable just because it makes definite claims about the world. For the falsificationist, If follows fairly readily from this that the more falsifiable a theory is the better, in some loose sense of more. The more a theory claims, the more potential opportunities there will be for showing that the world does not in fact behave in the way laid down by the theory. A very good theory will be one that makes very wide-ranging claims about the world, and which is consequently highly falsifiable, and is one that resists falsification whenever it is put to the test. ~ Alan F. Chalmers

I believe, or sense, that the universe has not been constructed from a purely mechanical, logical, rational point of view, but there is a magic afoot in the universe, that God can be looked at as a kind of a magician in which we get to perform tricks ourselves, without knowing that we're doing so. ~ Fred Alan Wolf

Context is worth 80 IQ points. ~ Alan Kay

Plutt wants droid. We take droid. Female don't interfere. ~ Alan Dean Foster

Introverts love, extroverts think they love. ~ Alan Maiccon

His eyes were hazel, his gray hair tousled, and he wore the look of a man who had seen too much, too soon, and been forced to deal with idiots all too often. ~ Alan Dean Foster

In my opinion, we will always be sinners in need of our Savior, Jesus Christ."

~R. Alan Woods [2007] ~ R. Alan Woods

They say that knowledge is power, but there is no knowledge more powerful than knowing that by your very thoughts, your own future is created! ~ Alan J. Buick

We can't reimpose old myths on ourselves or believe in new ones made up out of a desire for comfort; therefore, the path of self-examination is the only one a person of conscience can reasonably follow. ~ Alan W. Watts