Bo Bennett Quotes

Why is it always the "intelligent" people who are socialists?

I can walk. It's just that I'm so rich I don't need to.

It's the one species I wouldn't mind seeing vanish from the face of the earth. I wish they were like the White Rhinosix of them left in the Serengeti National Park, and all males.

...she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.

It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.

Cloisters, ancient libraries ... I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.

I'm for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.

Our father the novelist; my husband the poet. He belongs to the ages - just don't catch him at breakfast. Artists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.

I write plays about things that I can't resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.

I've never seen the point of the sea, except where it meets the land. The shore has a point. The sea has none.

The thing I think about is that once you've done it, you then start to think about what you're going to do next. It's much easier to follow something that's not been as successful as this.

Had your forefathers, Wigglesworth, been as stupid as you are, the human race would never have succeeded in procreating itself.

Standards are always out of date. That's what makes them standards.

God doesn't do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, "Can I be excused the Crucifixion?" No!

There is no such thing as a good script, onlya good film, and I'm conscious that my scripts often read better than they play.

There is no magic method of beginning... Take hold of your nerves, and jump.

The people who live in the past must yield to the people who live in the future. Otherwise the world would begin to turn the other way round.

It is only people of small stature who have to stand on their dignity.

During a long and varied career as a bachelor, dear spouse [mock platform manner], I have noticed that marriage is usually the death of politeness between a man and a woman.

Make love to every woman you meet; if you get five per cent of your outlay it's a good investment.

At moments we are all artists.

I don't read my reviews, I measure them.

You can only acquire really useful general ideas by first acquiring particular ideas . . . You cannot make bricks without straw.

As a rule people don't collect books; they let books collect themselves.

I will never cease advising my friends and enemies to read poetry before anything.

Prepare to live by all means, but for Heaven's sake do not forget to live.

Literature exists so that where one man has lived finely ten thousand may afterward live finely

The man who begins to go to bed forty minutes before he opens his bedroom door is bored; that is to say, he is not living.

The war years count double. Things and people not actively in use age twice as fast.

One of the troubles of the day, observes Mr. C.N. Peac, is that once we came upon the little red schoolhouse, whereas now we come upon the little-read school boy.

One of the greatest threats facing book publishing, and the entire country for that matter, is censorship.

The fact that we don't read more books in America can be traced squarely to the fact that we have newspapers that are about a hundred times as big as the newspapers anywhere else.

We are renters and borrowers and, in the end, only thieves.

Being a man is bullshit; maybe trying to be a man had been the problem all along. At a certain point you just have to trust someone. Even if it’s only yourself.

All I knew about shot putting was that my [older] brother could do 44 feet. I decided I wanted to beat him. . . . So I got a shot and went to work and made up my mind to do 45 feet.

I wish I would have had more to do in the film. I hated to get killed so soon.

I must learn what I can to teach what I must.

We teach offense 5-0/5-5 (whole method) and defense by part (1-1/3-3).

What does this program/team need this week?

In life every effort is marked down at the end as a win or a loss.

It's my favorite thing to do: luxurious nothing.

There's always going to be evil, but the way we unite, regardless of class, race, religion, or gender, empowers the goodness in the world.

How can you veto an idea you haven't heard?

... when I hear people say that penmanship is dead, my response: it's about time.

Acting is something I love to do. I love to perform and I love the art, the craft of it

When I am at a straight club, which is like once a year, if a man even looks in my direction, I verbally attack him.

My big thing is people. I just love people in my life.

I still have horrible luck with girls.

The loss of my parents was definitely the hardest thing I've had to endure. I just felt really dead inside for a long time.

Poetry and I fit together. I can't imagine being without it... It is food and drink, it is all seasons, it is the stuff of all existence.