John Self Quotes

Money by Martin Amis. I read it when I was 15, I read it hundreds of times since then and it always makes me laugh. Amis has managed to create a world that is both funny and abrasive. I'd love to play John Self, the depraved hero, who's without illusions, he created. ~ Robert Pattinson

Making lots of money
it's not that hard, you know. It's overestimated. Making lots of money is a breeze. You watch. ch. 1, p. 23 in Penguin paperback ~ Martin Amis

For all its outwardly easy Latin charm, Buenos Aires was making me feel sick and upset, so I did take that trip to the great plains where the gaucho epics had been written, and I did manage to eat a couple of the famous asados: the Argentine barbecue fiesta (once summarized by Martin Amis's John Self as 'a sort of triple mixed grill swaddled in steaks') with its slavish propitiation of the sizzling gods of cholesterol. Yet even this was spoiled for me: my hosts did their own slaughtering and the smell of drying blood from the abattoir became too much for some reason (I actually went 'off' steak for a good few years after this trip). Then from the intrepid Robert Cox of the Buenos Aires Herald I learned another jaunty fascist colloquialism: before the South Atlantic dumping method was adopted, the secret cremation of maimed and tortured bodies at the Navy School had been called an asado. In my youth I was quite often accused, and perhaps not unfairly, of being too politicized and of trying to import politics into all discussions. I would reply that it wasn't my fault if politics kept on invading the private sphere and, in the case of Argentina at any rate, I think I was right. The miasma of the dictatorship pervaded absolutely everything, not excluding the aperitifs and the main course. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Every time I have a hit, I buy a Rolls. ~ John Tavener

The result showed the wisdom of your orders. ~ John Bigelow

And this is the main difference between the gospel and philosophy: for though the philosophers speak excellently and with great judgment on the subject of morals, yet whatever excellency shines forth in their precepts, it is, as it were, a beautiful superstructure without a foundation; for by omitting principles, they offer a mutilated doctrine, like a body without a head. ~ John Calvin

And it occurred to him at last, with the finality of knowledge, that he had never known another human being with any intimacy or trust or with the human warmth of commitment. ~ John Edward Williams

Who can reckon up the loss of moral power that arises from the constant impression that nothing is worth doing in itself, but only as a preparation for something else, which in turn is only a getting ready for some genuinely serious end beyond? ~ John Dewey

The one thing I remember about Christmas was that my father used to take me out in a boat about ten miles offshore on Christmas Day, and I used to have to swim back. Extraordinary. It was a ritual.
Mind you, that wasn't the hard part. The difficult bit was getting out of the sack. ~ John Cleese

There is a divergence between private and social accounting that the market fails to register. One essential task of law and government is to institute the necessary conditions. ~ John Rawls

I like heroes, and would like to be a hero myself. I suppose we all want that. ~ John Rhys-Davies

How does the poet speak to men with power, but by being still more a man than they ~ John Keats

If you want to work for the kingdom of God, and to bring it, and enter into it, there is just one condition to be first accepted. You must enter into it as children, or not at all. ~ John Ruskin

Think of my Pleasure in Solitude, in comparison of my commerce with the world - there I am a child - there they do not know me not even my most intimate acquaintance - I give into their feelings as though I were refraining from irritating a little child - Some think me middling, others silly, other foolish - every one thinks he sees my weak side against my will; when in thruth it is with my will - I am content to be thought all this because I have in my own breast so graet a resource. This is one great reason why they like me so; because they can all show to advantage in a room, and eclipese from a certain tact one who is reckoned to be a good Poet - I hope I am not here playing tricks 'to make the angels weep': I think not: for I have not the least contempt for my species; and though it may sound paradoxical: my greatest elevations of Soul leave me every time more humbled - Enough of this - though in your Love for me you will not think it enough. ~ John Keats

Hide me from day's garish eye. ~ John Milton

I have read somewhere or other,-in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, I think,-that history is philosophy teaching by examples. ~ Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

...all of us are somewhere on a journey to God, and the gap between least and most advanced is infinitely smaller than the gap between the most advanced and God himself. ~ John Ortberg

Making one brilliant decision and a whole bunch of mediocre ones isn't as good as making a whole bunch of generally smart decisions throughout the whole process. ~ John Carmack

A true intellectual is a man who, after reading a book and being convinced by its arguments, will shoot someone or, more likely, order someone shot. ~ John McCarthy

They like their coffee like they like their ex-boyfriends: bitter. ~ John Green

You complain and demand zero compromise - so the GOP obstructs Obama so the economy doesn't improve - then you complain and demand even more zero compromise. Then you get to blame Obama for the slow recovery, which is sorta like John Wilkes Booth blaming Lincoln for missing the end of a play. ~ John Fugelsang

There are lots of excellent analysts out there. John Holdren at the Harvard Kennedy School, who was just president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has been talking about this stuff for years. There are lots of people out there who understand what's going on. The problem is, they aren't much picked up on Fox News. ~ Paul R. Ehrlich

So much depends upon the transparent G-tube erupting from the gut of the blue-lipped boy. So much depends upon this observer of the universe" ... "And you say you don't write poetry. ~ John Green

I am convinced more and more day by day that fine writing is next to fine doing, the top thing in the world. ~ John Keats

I miss the ocean; I miss Fenway. ~ John King

When I first went to preach the word abroad, the doctors and priests of the country did open wide against me. But I was persuaded of this, not to render railing for railing; but to see how many of their carnal professors I could convince of their miserable state by the law, and of the want and worth of Christ: for, thought I, This shall answer for me in time to come, when they shall be for my hire before their face. Gen. xxx. 33. ~ John Bunyan

Progress does not occur without change. ~ John C. Maxwell

Life is a hypocrite if I can't live The way it moves me! ~ John Eldredge

Like many men who consider their success incomplete, he was extraordinarily vain and consumed with a sense of his own importance. ~ John Edward Williams

Open-market democratic capitalism isn't the best system of government in the world, it just works the best. ~ John Ringo

The same ones who brought the children physically in the world have the natural obligation binding in the natural law to provide for the mental, moral and social upbringing of their offspring. ~ John Hardon

When I was a child and I was upset about something, my mother was not capable of containing that emotion, of letting me be upset but reassuring me, of just being with me in a calming way. She always got in a flap, so I not only had my own baby panics, fears and terrors to deal with, but I had to cope with hers, too. Eventually I taught myself to remain calm when I was panicked, in order not to upset her. In a way, she had managed to put me in charge of her. At 18 months old, I was doing the parenting. ~ John Cleese

What's messed up here isn't that this guy thinks we're on a television show. What's messed up here is that as far as I can tell, at this point, it's the most rational explanation for what's going on. ~ John Scalzi

I cannot remember a night so dark as to have hindered the coming day. ~ John Brown

It took me a lifetime of glimpses, but now I see you completely - did I tell you you're beautiful? so kind to animals, children and me ... ~ John Geddes

To those who have neither public nor private affections, the excitements of life are much curtailed, and in any case dwindle in value as the time approaches when all selfish interests must be terminated by death: while those who leave after them objects of personal affection, and especially those who have also cultivated a fellow-feeling with the collective interests of mankind, retain as lively an interest in life on the eve of death as in the vigour of youth and health. ~ John Stuart Mill