Rosamund Davies Quotes

If Cosgrove means to play games, then so do I. I will marry him because I must, but I shall not be a lamb- or a cow- led to the slaughter. If he intends to destroy my spirit, he will find it a difficult task. I am not some fly whose wings he can pull off and then step on. I'm... I'm a bee, and I shall sting him back. ~ Suzanne Enoch

Obsidian eyes met hers, unreadable and assessing. Men didn't generally pay her much attention except to make an even number in a dance. And now she had a secret nearly-betrothed and a supposed teacher, one who looked like an angel and one a devil, and both with awful reputations. Best to remember that neither of them likely had anything good in mind for her. ~ Suzanne Enoch

Psychologists have devised some ingenious ways to help unpack the human "now." Consider how we run those jerky movie frames together into a smooth and continuous stream. This is known as the "phi phenomenon." The essence of phi shows up in experiments in a darkened room where two small spots are briefly lit in quick succession, at slightly separated locations. What the subjects report seeing is not a succession of spots, but a single spot moving continuously back and forth. Typically, the spots are illuminated for 150 milliseconds separated by an interval of fifty milliseconds. Evidently the brain somehow "fills in" the fifty-millisecond gap. Presumably this "hallucination" or embellishment occurs after the event, because until the second light flashes the subject cannot know the light is "supposed" to move. This hints that the human now is not simultaneous with the visual stimulus, but a bit delayed, allowing time for the brain to reconstruct a plausible fiction of what has happened a few milliseconds before.

In a fascinating refinement of the experiment, the first spot is colored red, the second green. This clearly presents the brain with a problem. How will it join together the two discontinuous experiences - red spot, green spot - smoothly? By blending the colors seamlessly into one another? Or something else? In fact, subjects report seeing the spot change color abruptly in the middle of the imagined trajectory, and are even able to indicate exactly where usin ~ Paul Davies

I would love it if anyone gave me the job of adapting 'The Great Gatsby,' but nobody ever does. ~ Andrew Davies

For years I had a fantasy of a happy-ever-after ending. The first night I spent at the university my fantasy ended, because I thought a happy-ever-after was pointless. Because with my father I didn't want to hope for a happy ending but to have had a happy beginning. I wanted to have been looked after by Daddy in childhood, not finding resolution with my father as an adult. ~ Rosamund Lupton

Life is not a piece of cake ~ Ian Davies

I want the BBC to be a mass market public service broadcaster still funded by the licence fee ... and the licence fee is more durable than many people in the commercial sector believe. ~ Gavyn Davies

But the character of the music emphasized the tale as allegory
humorous, poignant, humane allegory
disclosing the metamorphosis of life itself, in which man moves from confident inexperience through the bitterness of experience, toward the rueful wisdom of self-knowledge. ~ Robertson Davies

It is hard to resist the impression that the present structure of the universe, apparently so sensitive to minor alterations in numbers, has been rather carefully thought out ... The seemingly miraculous concurrence of these numerical values must remain the most compelling evidence for cosmic design. ~ Paul Davies

It's only fashion that has said the pendulum has swung from extreme skepticism about extraterrestrial life to extreme credulity. The truth is somewhere in between. ~ Paul Davies

Although I am almost illiterate mathematically, I grasped very early in life that any one who can count to ten can count upward indefinitely if he is fool enough to do so. ~ Robertson Davies

She was a romantic, and as I had never met a female romantic before it was a delight to me to explore her emotions. She wanted to know all about me, and I told her as honestly as I could; but as I was barely twenty, and a romantic myself, I know now that I lied in every word I uttered - lied not in fact but in emphasis, in colour, and in intention. ~ Robertson Davies

We keep looking so hard in life for the "specific message," and yet we are blinded to the fact that the message is all around us, and within us all the time. We just have to stop demanding that it be on OUR terms or conditions, and instead open ourselves to the possibility that what we seek may be in front of us all the time. ~ Rosamund Stone Zander

The more help a person has in his garden, the less it belongs to him. ~ W.H. Davies

They've maintained their unbeaten record between the legs. ~ Barry Davies

By 1939 the Gulag was the largest employer in Europe. ~ Norman Davies

Jogging in the park is my excuse to look at all the girls. ~ Ray Davies

He types his labored column - weary drudge! Senile fudge and solemn: spare, editor, to condemn these dry leaves of his autumn. ~ Robertson Davies

- If Francis has really made up his soul [...], what lies ahead of him? Hasn't he achieved the great end of life?
- [...] Having got his soul under his eye, so to speak, Francis must now begin to understand it and be worthy of it [...]. Making up a soul isn't an end; it's the new beginning in the middle of life. ~ Robertson Davies

The deer hovered by the trees beyond as the sounds of the ravening wolves came to them across the grass, their own senses almost frozen in impotent horror. ~ David Clement-Davies

What we should be very concerned about is the excesses and the abuses. Where we see hunts where the fox is torn away out of the hole and thrown to the hounds, we have to be very concerned. Where we have hunts where foxes are bred for the sport of it, that is not pest control. That is pure bloody sport. ~ Huw Irranca-Davies

Study the sky, but do not love it. It is our prison and the symbol of our capture. ~ Rosamund Hodge

As long as the appointment process is transparent and there is a broad mix of political views among the governors of the BBC, I think the public can feel confident that impartiality and independence are just as important to me as they have been to previous incumbents. ~ Gavyn Davies

Are you New World or Old?'
'Sounds like a novel by Henry James.'
'Never read him.'
'Don't. But that was his question and he plumped for the Old. ~ Robertson Davies

I met her in a club down in North Soho, where you drink champagne and it tastes just like Coca-Cola. ~ Ray Davies

Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the dope-taker in pursuit of his drug. They may not want the books to read immediately, or at all; they want them to possess, to range on their shelves, to have at command. They want books as a Turk is thought to want concubines - not to be hastily deflowered, but to be kept at their master's call, and enjoyed more often in thought than in reality. ~ Robertson Davies

Joie de vivre. Joy and life together. It's such an ironically perfect description of you. ~ Rosamund Lupton

Well, I'll tell yer now, it's going t' be even better for talkin' t' me! Get your arse down tut station. I'd gor meself, but I'm sending you as a proxy. Sort it out at Oxford Street for me, will yer, eh?They're not doin' the bloody figures, an' I for one want to know what the eck's goin' on! You'll be writin' me a full report. And if they're pissing about, sack 'em, right? Get your arse on the next bloody train, eh! I want you there as soon as possible. Get yourself checked in tut hotel when you get there. You can phone that man, Bart is it, whatsisname, and let 'im knor, eh?.....What d'yer say? You'll do it for me? Grand! Get your arse down that station, now! The phone clicked off ~ Suzy Davies

Everyone who ever bargains with me is convinced that he is righteous. Even the ones who come sad-eyed and guilty - they weep to the gods that they are sinners, but in their hearts they believe their need is so special that it justifies any sin, that they are heroes for losing all their righteousness and paying with their souls. ~ Rosamund Hodge

Many do not understand how precarious Western civilization is and what a joy it is. From it, we get real democracy. From it, we get the sort of intellectual tolerance that allows me to propound something that may be completely alien to you. ~ John Rhys-Davies

For every gain there is a sacrifice, and the removal of the parasite sometimes entails removal of the host. ~ Luke Davies

Forgive yourself for being a human creature, Ramezay. That is the beginning of wisdom; that is part of what is meant by the fear of God; and for you it is the only way to save your sanity. Begin now, or you will end up with your saint in the madhouse. ~ Robertson Davies

I wanted to make him understand that we shared the details of our lives, because they were the threads that braided us so closely together. And you would have been certain to tell me about a Sabatier knife, because it would have had the rare value of being a detail in your life which tied directly into mine - Bee in Sister ~ Rosamund Lupton

It is possible that a scientific discovery will be made that humans will later regret because it has awful consequences. The problem is, we probably would not know in advance and, once the discovery is made, it cannot be undiscovered. ~ Paul Davies

Sex and laughter. The heart and lungs of a relationship. ~ Rosamund Lupton

You can get things out of acting with someone a second time around that you don't necessarily get the first time because you're more familiar, more comfortable. ~ Rosamund Pike

It's Brazil 2 Scotland 1, so Scotland are back where they were at the start of the match ~ Barry Davies

On the surface I'm a mild mannered person, that's until you scratch the animal inside. ~ Ray Davies

Things changed with the discovery of neutron stars and black holes - objects with gravitational fields so intense that dramatic space and time-warping effects occur. ~ Paul Davies

She pans life for gold and finds it daily. ~ Rosamund Lupton

Music teaches us about lyricism in writing, a delicate turn of phrase, selectiveness with words, rhythmic passages. Most of all, music, like good writing, touches our emotions with cadences that slip in like a subtle visitor, familiar and known before. ~ Suzy Davies

I know what it is like to live every day and every hour by the fruits of someone else's wretched bargain. To see people suffer and know that they suffer because I am loved.
I would not do that to the ones I love. Not for anything in the whole wide world. ~ Rosamund Hodge

Mickey: I told you to stay behind.
Martha: You looked like you needed help. Besides, you're the one who persuaded me to go freelance.
Mickey: Yeah, but - we're being fired at by a Sontoran. A dumpling with a gun. And this is no place for a married woman.
Martha: Well then. You shouldn't have married me.
Above them, The Doctor takes out the Sontoran.
Mickey: If we go in here, and down to the factory floor, and down past that corridor. Then he won't know that we're here. Martha sees the Doctor.
Martha: Mickey. Mickey.
-Doctor Who ~ Russell T. Davies

The world is now too small for anything but brotherhood. ~ A. Powell Davies

Hence it is that old men do plant young trees, the fruit whereof another age shall take. ~ Sir John Davies