David Baddiel > Quotes

“building were a lot more grown-ups, some of them just standing there, others sitting by tents or lying in sleeping bags. They looked up expectantly when they saw Barry. Lukas got his loudhailer back out. “Move away, please!” The grown-ups looked disappointed, shuffling backwards to let them through. The three boys walked up to the door, which was large and black and on which were written, in big brass capitals:”
― David Baddiel, The Blockbuster Baddiel Collection: The Parent Agency; The Person Controller; AniMalcolm

“Zimmer”
― David Baddiel, The Boy Who Could Do What He Liked

“why a difference in kind should equate to a difference in significance.”
― David Baddiel, Jews Don't Count

“Just as a particular racism can only really be defined by the victims of that racism, the deep truth of identity is only available to those who live that identity. Casting a non-minority actor to mimic that identity feels, to the progressive eye, like impersonation, and impersonation carries with it an element of mockery: or at least, it is reductive, lessening the complexity of that experience by channeling it through an actor who hasn’t lived it.*”
― David Baddiel, Jews Don't Count

“My soul fills quietly with the yellow gas of joy. I am to see Alice. I feel light returning, a sudden surge like a goal in extra-time; hope spreads in my heart like fridgeless Clover on white white bread. Even my cold toes become warm. Then I realise that Jezebel has been sick on my feet.”
― David Baddiel, Time for Bed

“Derek. Or any other name that no boy had been called since 1953. Being called Barry was just one – although it was pretty near the top of the list – of the many things Barry blamed his parents (Susan and Geoff: go figure…) for.”
― David Baddiel, The Parent Agency

“really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really,”
― David Baddiel, Birthday Boy

“Humans invest emotionally in story in a very intense way. It matters to them. And they are not unaware of the fact that they're investing in is fictional even while they build all sorts of cosmetic realities around it.”
― David Baddiel, The God Desire

“Anti-Semitism is a second-class racism.”
― David Baddiel, Jews Don't Count

“In his bedroom, Barry looked at himself in the mirror. He wasn’t, it has to be said, entirely comfortable in the suit. Peevish had helped him put it on, which had felt a little weird as his mum and dad hadn’t helped him dress for a long time. But then again he didn’t normally wear suits. And certainly not shirts with cufflinks. And bow ties. Well, he had once worn a bow tie, to a party of”
― David Baddiel, The Parent Agency

“To fight antisemitism, you have to be aware of how the antisemites see Jewishness, which is as a thing in your blood, not your spiritual soul.”
― David Baddiel, Jews Don't Count

“it is the prerogative of those on the receiving end of any specific racism to define that racism.”
― David Baddiel, Jews Don't Count

“just look around you. I don’t wish to be rude …”
― David Baddiel, Head Kid

“Kirsty White.”
― David Baddiel, The Person Controller

“United States”
― David Baddiel, The Boy Who Could Do What He Liked

“Waiters haven’t dressed like this since 1972,”
― David Baddiel, The Boy Who Got Accidentally Famous

“A sacred circle is drawn around those whom the progressive modern left are prepared to go into battle for, and it seems as if the Jews aren't in it.”
― David Baddiel, Jews Don't Count

“Barry lay in his bed, fuming. He’d gone straight to his room, without cleaning his teeth or anything, and slammed the door. But it had just come back at him as his door didn’t really shut properly unless you closed it carefully, jiggling the handle up as you did it. So he’d had to do that after his slam, which felt completely at odds with a show of rage. He lay there in his onesie – a zebra one, with ears and a tail, which was too big for him because it had been passed down from Lukas – and stared at his room. His head”
― David Baddiel, The Blockbuster Baddiel Collection: The Parent Agency; The Person Controller; AniMalcolm

“the”
― David Baddiel, The Parent Agency

“BUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUM. PPS Sorry, I think my computer has been hacked. By your mum.”
― David Baddiel, Head Kid

“do this – and very large lines appeared across his forehead. His nostrils flared, becoming even wider holes than they already were. Speak-No, Hear-No and See-No”
― David Baddiel, AniMalcolm

“pointless,”
― David Baddiel, Birthday Boy

“The Talmud is a book of exegesis of the Old Testament, codified in the fourteenth century and containing the basis of all the archaic rules and laws of Judaism:”
― David Baddiel, Jews Don't Count

“The point is, history is not past. It's effects live in the present.”
― David Baddiel, Jews Don't Count

“As it happens, I look at that picture, and damn, he looks like family to me, too. But I know I would only be trolled on”
― David Baddiel, Jews Don't Count

“biological mum”
― David Baddiel, The Boy Who Could Do What He Liked

“Shoe-bean?”
― David Baddiel, The Boy Who Could Do What He Liked

“With story comes another God benefit: meaning. A sense, on an individual level, that your own narrative has significance: that it matters, in some way. This can only be the case if Someone or Something is taking account of it.”
― David Baddiel, The God Desire

“Huh?”
― David Baddiel, The Parent Agency

“ever used her, but …” He turned the card over so that Jenny could see the writing on the back. Jenny squinted at it. “Is that …?” “Yes.” Jenny thought for a while. “Well then, I guess it must be OK. Although, looking at the state of that card, I think Mrs Stokes might be quite old now.” Jenny was right. When Alfie first saw Mrs Stokes, he didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone so ancient. She made his oldest grandparent, Grandpa Bernie, look like a member of a boy band. She had a Zimmer frame, two hearing aids and – although Alfie didn’t know how tall she might have been before – seemed to have shrunk”
― David Baddiel, The Boy Who Could Do What He Liked