Victorian East London Quotes

No book is written; it's always re-written ~ Jean Fullerton

I have always been English, ever since I emigrated from England and since the kids in Canada beat me up at the age of twelve for having an East London Cockney accent. I thank them for the cockney taunts because the beatings turned me on to boxing. But on a serious note Canada has been kind to me. ~ Lennox Lewis

Crossing my arms over my chest, I said, a little too heartily, "So this is the library." There certainly couldn't be any doubt on that score; never had a room so resembled popular preconception. The walls were paneled in rich, dark wood, although the finish had worn off the edges in spots, where books had scraped against the wood in passing one too many times. A whimsical iron staircase curved to the balcony, the steps narrowing into pie-shaped wedges that promised a broken neck to the unwary. I tilted my head back, dizzied by the sheer number of books, row upon row, more than the most devoted bibliophile could hope to consume in a lifetime of reading.

In one corner, a pile of crumbling paperbacks - James Bond, I noticed, squinting sideways, in splashy seventies covers - struck a slightly incongruous note. I spotted a moldering pile of Country Life cheek by jowl with a complete set of Trevelyan's History of England in the original Victorian bindings. The air was rich with the smell of decaying paper and old leather bindings. Downstairs, where I stood with Colin, the shelves made way for four tall windows, two to the east and two to the north, all hung with rich red draperies checked with blue, in the obverse of the red-flecked blue carpet. On the west wall, the bookshelves surrendered pride of place to a massive fireplace, topped with a carved hood to make Ivanhoe proud, and large enough to roast a serf. In short, the library was a Gothic fantasy. ~ Lauren Willig

The original capital cost (i.e. actual value) of the Barts Health PFI was £1.1 billion (around £1 million per bed) but will end up costing £7.1 billion by 2049.14 £6 billion will go to the PFI consortium Skanska Innisfree and partners. Barts Health are paying £100 million a year in interest before they even see a patient.15 That's £3 billion, just in interest, over 30 years. Imagine what you could do for healthcare in East London with this money. So ~ Youssef El-Gingihy

People expect me to be that guy. But I'm more east London boy than east Baltimore. ~ Idris Elba

As a young girl, I was too intent on getting to London and drama school and out of east Yorkshire to think about winning Oscars. I did win a Bafta once, and was so unprepared for it I jabbered on for a minute - a minute too long. ~ Anna Maxwell Martin

My travels took me as far north as Thorsminde, Denmark (in February no less); as far south as Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia; as far west as the Hoover Library at Stanford University; and to various points east, including the always amazing Library of Congress and the U.S. National Archives, and equally enticing archives in London, Liverpool, and Cambridge. ~ Erik Larson

Martha Stewart has two houses in East Hampton. She has an old fashioned Victorian house and a very new modern house. ~ Steven Gaines

I'm going to Queen Mary's [university] in East London and I am trying to juggle it. Sometimes, it's really hard. ~ Yasmin Paige

Times were very hard if you were a poor, politically correct Jewish girl living in the east end of London during the Blitz and you were trying to eke out a living as a hairdresser. ~ Linda Grant

All the lies, all the ways we have of trying to make life simple for ourselves by putting people into boxes marked black, white, good, bad, when all of us are victims of our own prejudices. ~ Julia Gregson

I never felt totally, 100%, patriotically English ... I'd seen a lot of the world by an early age - sort of spent a lot of time traveling around Lebanon and I'd seen Babylon, and Damascus, and all sorts of places in the Middle East by the time I was ten. Then we'd return to Ruslip in West London ... Done a fair bit of traveling really. ~ Andy Serkis

Dad was the first man I fell in love with. He was a very funny man. He grew up in the East End of London and was very dynamic, and I understood why my mother fell in love with him. ~ Patsy Kensit

The Queen coined new money specifically for the Company {East India}. Minted at the Tower of London and bearing her arms on one side and a portcullis on the other, it soon became know as the portcullis money. She also granted the merchants a new flag which, with its blue field and background of thirteen red and white stripes, prefigured the one adopted by the Thirteen Colonies of America some 175 years later. ~ Giles Milton

But now the train had finally begun to move, and Albie had switched the fearless truth-telling eye of his camera lens from his untied laces to the walls of the tunnels under east London, because you can never have enough pictures of dirty concrete. ~ David Nicholls

1939 and the children of Britain are on the move. David and Frankie, two boys from the East End of London, are thrown together by chance. Totally opposite in temperament an character, they form an unlikely friendship. This friendship is compromised by the presence of Elizabeth; who test their loyalties to the limit. ~ Terry Knowles

After university, I taught secondary school for a while and opened a bookshop in Greenwich, just east of London. ~ Nigel Hamilton

Southend is a dormitory town for London. But it also had this thing of being the playground of the East End - a glamorous holiday town. ~ Helen Mirren

London and the south-east of England are very crowded spaces. Wherever a new runway is placed, thousands will be affected. Residents in nearby Longford, Harmondsworth and Sipson, which lie to the north of Heathrow, face having their homes compulsorily purchased for land to build the new runway. ~ Tim Bowler

Traditional British desserts with lots of custard are my biggest weakness - I particularly love the puds at St. John restaurant in East London. ~ Eva Green

In London the slaughter of the innocents goes on on a scale more stupendous than any before in the history of the world. And equally stupendous is the callousness of the people who believe in Christ, acknowledge God, and go to church regularly on Sunday. For the rest of the week they riot about on the rents and profits which come to them from the East End stained with the blood of the children. Also, at times, so peculiarly are they made, they will take half a million of these rents and profits and send it away to educate the black boys of the Soudan. ~ Jack London

Phyllis is one of the tunnel boring machines for Crossrail and one of the most extraordinary characters I met, visiting some of the most exciting infrastructure in Britain. Crossrail is the new railway which will run from West to East right across London. It is the biggest engineering project in Europe - and Phyllis herself is not exactly dainty. ~ Evan Davis

Toby had spent three years living in the East End of London, back when he was a student, an area that would have profited greatly from a heavily armed UN Peacekeeping force. Lacking the funds necessary to reach the more civilized areas of London, toby endured three very long years ... ~ Simon R. Green

It is white. - when asked what the White house was like by a student in East London ~ George W. Bush

My first vote was for a communist in east London when I was a medical student. But I've voted Tory, Labour and Lib Dem in my time. ~ Robert Winston

I will always have two regrets. I don't have a presence in London, and I would have liked to have done more work in the Middle East. ~ Zaha Hadid

Dr. Julian Huxley, famous English biologist and director of UNESCO, recently stated that Western scientists should "learn the Oriental techniques" for entering the trance state and for control of breathing. "What happens? How is it possible?" he said. An Associated Press dispatch from London, dated Aug. 21, 1948, reported: "Dr. Huxley told the new World Federation for Mental Health it might well look into the mystic lore of the East. If this lore could be investigated scientifically, he advised mental specialists, 'then I think an immense step forward could be made in your field. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda

By modern standards the whole of greater London, including Southwark and Westminster, was small. It stretched only about two miles from north to south and three from east to west, and could be crossed on foot in not much more than an hour. ~ Bill Bryson

I love driving around east London - it's always full of surprises. Actually, I don't drive myself - I like to be driven. ~ Zaha Hadid

When all's said and done they're a strange breed, these South and East Londoners, and they're amused by little things. Their love of jellied eels and pie 'n' mash is astonishing. "Food of the Gods," they call it, as they enter some filthy hovel to order pie 'n' mash, without even knowing what they're eating. I've asked what meat it is and been told, "Meat? Its pie, pie 'n' mash with liquor. Food of the Gods."
But it's not food of the Gods at all. It's just pie and mashed potatoes, and that's it. Nothing special about it. There's nothing nostalgic about it. It's not Bermondsey Billy Wells or the Artful Dodger. It's just a meat pie and mashed potatoes. And it looks like Barry Manilow's blown his nose in it. ~ Karl Wiggins

I remember, one day, I just printed out about a hundred CVs, and I was running around London. I was going to modeling agencies, temping agencies, anything. I was so desperate. ~ Fleur East

I grew up in the East End of London, the youngest of three boys in a Catholic household. Both my parents were market traders and worked seven days a week. ~ James Herbert

A ripe suggestion," I said. "Where are you meeting her? At the Ritz?"
"Near the Ritz."
He was geographically accurate. About fifty yards east of the Ritz there is one of those blighted tea-and-bun shops you see dotted about all over London and into this, if you'll believe me, young Bingo dived like a homing rabbit; and before I had time to say a word we were wedged in at a table, on the brink of a silent pool of coffee left there by an early luncher. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

I'm such an odd mix of things. My grandfather was Indian: I've got more family living in India than I do in the U.K. My old man was East London. I was brought up in Yorkshire. My great-grandfather was Irish. ~ Sebastian Coe

We were not many, and the world was very small. There were strange lands to the east- islands like Akutan; so we thought all the world was islands, and did not mind. ~ Jack London