Martin Booth > Quotes

“I enjoy books. No room is fit for occupation without a lining of books.”
― Martin Booth, A Very Private Gentleman

“Catholicism - all the perversions of Christianity - is not a faith of love. It is a faith of fear. Obey, be good, toe the line, and heaven is yours, the first prize in the lottery of eternity. Disobey, react, cut the lifeline, and never-ceasing damnation is the booby prize. The dogma is, love the only god and you shall be safe. Fail in that love and he will not rescue you, not until you crawl and apologize and fawn before the altar. What kind of a religion demands such indignity?”
― Martin Booth, A Very Private Gentleman

“Anything is possible where faith is concerned.”
― Martin Booth

“I enjoy books. No room is fit for occupation without a lining of books. They contain the condensed experiences of humanity. To live fully, one has to read widely.”
― Martin Booth, A Very Private Gentleman

“Real history is the commonplace, unrecorded.”
― Martin Booth, A Very Private Gentleman

“The Majoon, or Hemp confection, is a compound of sugar, butter, flour, milk and sidhee or bang. The process has been repeatedly performed before me by Ameer, the proprietor of a celebrated place of resort for Hemp devotees in Calcutta, and who is considered the best artist in his profession. Four ounces of sidhee, and an equal quantity of ghee are placed in an earthen or well-tinned vessel, a pint of water added, and the whole warmed over a charcoal fire. The mixture is constantly stirred until the water all boils away, which is known by the crackling noise of the melted butter on the sides of the vessel. The mixture is then removed from the fire, squeezed through cloth while hot—by which an oleaginous solution of the active principles and colouring matter of the Hemp is obtained—and the leaves, fibres, &c. remaining on the cloth are thrown away. The green oily solution”
― Martin Booth, Cannabis: A History

“I do not understand how men can kill such beauty. There can be no joy, surely, in capturing such a masterpiece of evolution, gassing it with chloroform or squeezing its thorax until it is dead, setting it on a cork board until rigor mortis is advanced then pinning it, frozen by death, in a glass-topped case, hung over with a curtain to keep the light from fading the colours. To me, this is the height of frivolous insanity.Nothing can be gained from killing a butterfly. Killing a man is a different matter.”
― Martin Booth, A Very Private Gentleman

“And take a word of advice. Do not dream of the day of your release. Do not think about it for if you do, it will not come. Like the kettle you watch, it will not boil. Men go mad thinking about the past, the future. Here, there is no then and no next. There is only now. Live for now.’ He paused to let his words sink in. ‘There is no point in being morbid about it. Do that and you die. Inside.’ He put his hand on his chest. ‘In your heart. The blood will still pump but the spirit will be dead. The spirit is what they want to kill. Not the body. The body has a use.”
― Martin Booth, The Industry of Souls: A Novel

“The sinner searches forever after a sign to prove it is worth his while to recant. I should know: I have been a sinner, and a catholic too”
― Martin Booth, A Very Private Gentleman

“pantagruelion. It is quite plainly hemp and Rabelais was obviously very familiar with it. This is hardly surprising when one considers his father had farmed hemp at Cinais, three miles south-west of Chinon, on the River Vienne.”
― Martin Booth, Cannabis: A History

“Autumn has a drama, a magnificence that spring lacks. The greening of bushes and the first flowers are not as thrilling, not as life enriching somehow, as autumn. Autumn signals fulfilment, the success of the year. Spring is merely a time of promise.”
― Martin Booth, Islands of Silence: A Novel

“The first step was to organize his disciples into ranks. With himself as grand master, he structured those beneath him in six grades, the last being the fida’i. Meaning ‘the devoted ones’, the fida’i were the foot soldiers who, without consideration to their own personal safety or life, would unswervingly carry out their orders. If necessary, they would bide their time for months until the moment was ripe, studying their victims’ lives in intricate detail. To die in the pursuit of their duty was considered a privilege and would ensure entry into Paradise. This dedication to the task and fanatical lack of fear for death made the fida’i feared throughout Islam.”
― Martin Booth, Cannabis: A History

“we are, everyone of us, in arrears to death.”
― Martin Booth, A Very Private Gentleman

“that the human race would become extinct if every member of it could see themselves having sex?”
― Martin Booth, A Very Private Gentleman

“When The Marriage Guide; or, Natural History of Generation: A Private Instructor for Married Persons and Those about to Marry, both Male and Female was published in 1851, written by a quack doctor called Frederick C. Hollick of Philadelphia, it advised readers to write in for the author’s patent aphrodisiac. It contained hashish and, with the book which was republished in nearly two hundred subsequent editions, made Hollick’s fortune. This was not the only time cannabis was recommended to those in wedlock. Some women’s temperance societies advocated it in place of alcohol: their reasoning was that drunks hit their wives, but cannabis users did not. At the American Centennial Exposition of 1876, in Hollick’s home town of Philadelphia, there was a Turkish hashish stand at which passers-by could try it out: pharmacists throughout the town stocked up in anticipation of an increase in demand.”
― Martin Booth, Cannabis: A History

“Taboo is not a word considered with any seriousness in the Old World.”
― Martin Booth, A Very Private Gentleman

“The study of cannabinoids goes back over a century. CBN, at first thought to be the principal psycho-active agent, was identified in the 1890s, then, in the 1930s, CBD was isolated. However, it was not until 1964, with the post-war advances in organic chemistry, that two Israeli chemists, Gaoni and Mechoulam, isolated and identified THC. Since then, studies have discovered a long list of other cannabinoids, many of which have yet to be fully investigated.”
― Martin Booth, Cannabis: A History

“To cool the smoke, which is hotter and coarser than that of tobacco, a filter consisting of a damp cloth was sometimes held over the mouthpiece. In India, the pipe was known as a chillim (sometimes spelt chillum or chillam) which derived from the Hindi chilam, meaning a chalice.”
― Martin Booth, Cannabis: A History

“The members ate hashish as dawamesk. Green in colour, it was a spread or jam which Moreau obtained from North Africa, made of hashish, almond paste, pistachio nuts, sugar, orange or tamarind peel, cloves and other spices: on occasion, cantharidin (powdered and desiccated blister beetles, Lytta vesicatoria, more commonly known as Spanish fly) was added as a sexual stimulant. It was usually taken with a meal, straight from a spoon or smeared on biscuits or bread. Once consumed and the main courses of the meal over, the members lay back on cushions and waited for the drug to take effect.”
― Martin Booth, Cannabis: A History

“The criminality added a certain spice to an otherwise stultifying existence in an utterly boring location.”
― Martin Booth, A Very Private Gentleman

“Whoever it was that first realized that a woman wronged is a dangerous animal, and I suspect he was a Neolithic half-ape, was immeasurably correct.”
― Martin Booth, A Very Private Gentleman

“So. I am here, alone, in the half-darkness of the Italian night, drinking rosy wine and dining on rose blossom. The world is good. Time has stopped. The moon is hidden by the distant storm. The streets are quiet for it is just before one o’clock, even the addicts gone, curled into their puzzle of fallacious dreams, the ground too wet in the Parco della Resistenza dell’ 8 Settembre for the lovers. The stars no longer move.”
― Martin Booth, A Very Private Gentleman

“This they gleaned from Muslims opposed to the Nizari Ismaili, who used various derogatory terms for them, such as Hashishiyya or Hashshashin.”
― Martin Booth, Cannabis: A History

“AROUND 1271 OR 1272, MARCO POLO, THE RENOWNED VENETIAN merchant adventurer, was on his way through Persia en route for Cathay when he came upon a story told by travellers in that region. Twenty-five years later he recounted it in his book II Milione, better known today as The Travels of Marco Polo. The story concerned a remote area ruled by one they called the Old Man of the Mountains, whose followers were notorious for their ruthlessness. According to Marco Polo, they had been in existence since the middle of the eleventh century and there was not an Arab leader who did not go in mortal dread of them. The disciples of this leader were kept loyal to their master by the promise that, were they to die whilst in his service, they would assuredly go to Paradise. To strengthen their resolve, the Old Man of the Mountains gave initiates to his following a preview of what it would be like in Paradise by maintaining a fabulous garden within his mountain stronghold. In this pleasure ground, exquisitely beautiful houris wandered ready to fulfil any desire, the fountains ran with milk and honey and the flowers were beyond compare. However, it was said, to enter this fabled place the would-be acolyte was first given a powerful drug and, only when unconscious, allowed in: before leaving, he was again drugged. After their induction, the initiates were given a solid Islamic education but were also taught the arts of murder, killing anyone whom their master commanded be put to death. Before going into battle, they apparently partook of the same drug to increase their courage. The drug was hashish. The veracity of Marco Polo’s writings has long been suspect, yet the story has stuck, enhanced and exaggerated as the centuries have passed. The legend of the Old Man of the Mountains has become nothing short of unassailable fact and his followers, notorious as much for their merciless cruelty as their gargantuan appetites for hashish, have become a byword for brutality. Even the name by which they came to be known derived from the drug it was alleged they took: they were called the Hashshashin. They are now known as the Assassins.”
― Martin Booth, Cannabis: A History

“Assyrian qunnabu, meaning ‘noise’: it was thought the Assyrians used cannabis as an incense in religious ceremonies and were quite vocal after inhaling it.”
― Martin Booth, Cannabis: A History

“Rich girls are a pain in the arse in the sack:”
― Martin Booth, A Very Private Gentleman

“The greatest of the Nizari Ismaili leaders in Syria was Rashid ad-Din as-Sinan, who ruled over their affairs from his castle at Masyaf from the early 1160s until his death in 1192. Rashid ad-Din as-Sinan referred to himself as shaykh al-jabal—the Mountain Chief—and it was from this that the moniker the Old Man of the Mountains arose, cemented in time into the popular consciousness by”
― Martin Booth, Cannabis: A History

“A noisy bed-frame is the last sound many a man has heard. I do not intend to join the august company of deceased fools.”
― Martin Booth, A Very Private Gentleman