B.S. Johnson Quotes

If you are truly a servant of God, then you are to serve him as a master.

A good story feels both surprising and inevitable, fresh and familiar.

[I]n communism, you'd threaten a dog into compliance, while in capitalism, obedience is obtained through bribes.

Sometimes we have to behave indifferent towards people who proclaim their love to us, just to see if they are really different.

I became intent on saving him through showing him that he was loved.

In 1924 Mao took a Chinese friend, newly arrived from Europe, to see the notorious sign in the Shanghai park, 'Chinese and Dogs Not Allowed'.

I knew it was beautiful, but knowing something is beautiful and caring about it are two very different things, and I didn't care.

Irony is the word I forget the meaning of immediately after I look it up, but I kind of feel like I live in a constant state of it.

Lecturing Brooks was as useful as lecturing a cat.

Sometimes people graduate but they don't leave. They hang around for years, for no reason. I would think of ghosts like that, I decided.

English rain feels obligatory, like paperwork. It dampens already damn days and slicks the stones.

Silicon-based life may be impossible for one other reason: silicon bonds readily dissolve in water.

The only measure of your success is in the number of people you have help.

All bonafide revolutions are of necessity revolutions of the spirit.

What we have most to fear is failure of the heart.

Don't throw a monkey-wrench into the machinery.

Sometimes I think we can tell how important it is to risk by how dangerous it is to do so.

But being on location and shooting, whether its in Puerto Rico or Atlanta, it always reminds me of how really cool my job can be. Interacting with the fans is one of the best parts of it.

There's no such thing as old age. I'm no different now than I was 50 years ago. I'm just having more fun.

Next to courage, willpower is the most important thing in politics.

Courage is the essential element in any great public man or woman.

I wish someone would ask me to design a cathedral.

I was brought up as an only child, and we were very close. But when I was 14, we got evicted. We came home to a padlock, and I looked up at my mom and she was crying, and there was nothing to do.

When I was a kid at four years old, that's when I started amateur wrestling with my dad and family. And when that's instilled in you, it never goes away.

It's great when talented people in the world, in the same business, can see your work and compliment you on what you're doing and take a strong interest in your movements in your career.

I don't go online, I don't read reviews, I try not to look at anything on the Internet.

I can't think of anything worse than trying to schmooze someone with the idea that you're an actor.

I knew the Beatles songs and how influential they are to other bands, but I'm not a fanatic, so I could look outside the box and observe.

I was always told at school that you had to have a back-up plan, but all I ever wanted to do was act. There was no plan B for me.

I was brought up by a really proud, supportive family, so I have that sort of grounding.

I get on fine with my mum and dad, but if they want to see the grandchildren, they come to me.

Anyone who's got a guitar, you like to pick it up. I can play a couple of songs, some '50s rock and roll, a bit of Elvis. That's it, really - I'm not a musician, I'm not a singer.

The thing about travelling is that you work hard and play hard, but you can do all those things without your parents knowing.

The buzz you get when you're playing a song and everyone is screaming and dancing and what have you and singing along is incredible.

I think with anything where you delve into the back story of an artist, it kind of explains their work more intimately.

Something like making the NIT would have been a great way to showcase the season we had.

But people do things to survive, and then after they survive, they can't live with what they've done.

What good's a captive without her captor?

The darkness inside your head is something your imagination fills with stories that have nothing to do with the real darkness around you.

In my experience, ghosts are made up only of the living, people you know are out there but are forever out of range

I know it really sounds cheesy, but I did feel a duty to try to tell the stories of people who couldn't speak for themselves.

The death of dictator Kim Jong-Il has cast all eyes on North Korea, a country without literature or freedom or truth.

I thought that, with so much current attention focused on the topic of North Korea, I might share what I think are three books which cast a rare light on the elusive realm of North Korea.

Imagine a world in which no writer has written a literary novel in sixty years. Imagine a place where not a single person has read a book that is truly about the character at its center.

Like putting a name to my problems would solve anything

All the lessons you need to learn in life, he said, will be taught to you by your enemy.

The past is history; The future is a mystery; This moment is a gift; That is why this moment is called the present; Enjoy it.

We need people like me in the Labour party.

Rumors of coal's demise may have been greatly exaggerated.

There's a song", I say. "There's always a song", he says.