Mark > Mark's Quotes

“People often say that the English are very cold fish, very reserved, that they have a way of looking at things – even tragedy – with a sense of irony. There’s some truth in it; it’s pretty stupid of them, though. Humor won’t save you; it doesn’t really do anything at all. You can look at life ironically for years, maybe decades; there are people who seem to go through most of their lives seeing the funny side, but in the end, life always breaks your heart. Doesn’t matter how brave you are, how reserved, or how much you’ve developed a sense of humor, you still end up with your heart broken. That’s when you stop laughing. In the end there’s just the cold, the silence and the loneliness. In the end, there’s only death.”
― Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles

“Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be—or to be indistinguishable from—self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.”
― Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

“The world must be all fucked up," he said then, "when men travel first class and literature goes as freight.”
― Gabriel García Márquez

“...there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

“One of the key things when you look at the PM, he makes difficult decisions. He has always been very clear in standing up for his convictions”
― Sebastian Payne, Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour's Lost England

“much of northern England is inherently Eurosceptic”
― Sebastian Payne, Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour's Lost England

“increasingly middle-class make up of Labour’s traditional heartlands:”
― Sebastian Payne, Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour's Lost England

“Little I had seen on the first stop challenged my scepticism about just how much New Labour had actually done for its northern heartlands, although the successful remodelling of the Port of Blyth is a clear boon. The schools may have been improved and the housing stock better, but it did little to revive a town that gradually lost its purpose.”
― Sebastian Payne, Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour's Lost England

“Despite Project Genesis being part-funded by a grant from the European Union, 55 per cent of North West Durham voted for Brexit in the 2016 referendum.8”
― Sebastian Payne, Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour's Lost England

“Labour is yesterday’s operation – all about unions, all about strikes. Lanchester is not about that, it’s about people who look after people. We don’t need any union on our side.”
― Sebastian Payne, Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour's Lost England

“Jaguar saloon, a car for the man of the people only in colour.”
― Sebastian Payne, Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour's Lost England

“In short, Sedgefield’s economic base is more diverse, more prosperous, and therefore more Tory.”
― Sebastian Payne, Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour's Lost England

“Labour was too successful: it made the seats richer and therefore more Conservative.”
― Sebastian Payne, Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour's Lost England

“Wallis, ironically, lives in Leeds and commutes into Wakefield.”
― Sebastian Payne, Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour's Lost England

“It’s also about an awareness that Wakefield once had lots of independent shops that people took pride in.”
― Sebastian Payne, Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour's Lost England

“Creagh also blamed much of what happened in 2019 and Brexit on her former Islington comrade Jeremy Corbyn. The day after the election, she confronted Corbyn in Portcullis House in the Palace of Westminster, enraged to see him taking selfies with young supporters after she and dozens of other Labour MPs had lost their seats. ‘I don’t think Jeremy did the cause any favours, he went to EU rallies without mentioning the European Union. He was lost in his own self-righteousness. The whole kind of movement and the momentum around his own personal political project, which I think, in retrospect, is probably not the same political project of the Labour Party’s historic mission, which is to get people elected to Parliament. I think Jeremy kind of lost sight of that.”
― Sebastian Payne, Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour's Lost England

“right-leaning”
― Sebastian Payne, Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour's Lost England

“he was especially taken with the idea of how devolution can empower these places.”
― Sebastian Payne, Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour's Lost England

“Although Brexit was primarily, for him, about sovereignty, he agreed with the common view that there was a strong anti-establishment feeling that grew from 2008 to 2010. ‘I feel really strongly that the roots were forged in the period around the financial crisis and the aftermath. You had the country bailing out the banks at great expense to taxpayers and the injustice that people felt at that but going along with it to stabilize the economy. Then, of course, in the aftermath, you have the years of austerity when the country is paying the price and at the same time you had the MPs’ expenses scandal. So it was the idea of not only the bankers, but also the politicians.”
― Sebastian Payne, Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour's Lost England

“And I think it’s pretty common parlance now that the freight industry is actually seeing strength and growth. It’s not because of Brexit, it’s just not been interrupted by Brexit. Trade continues with the world.”
― Sebastian Payne, Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour's Lost England

“He argued the UK’s freight industry is ‘very, very good’ and the UK is fantastic at managing complex supply chains – confirmed during the Brexit period and coronavirus pandemic, when supply chains remained mostly intact and fears of mass shortages proved unfounded.”
― Sebastian Payne, Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour's Lost England

“A household name, if your household was in north London.”
― Sebastian Payne, Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour's Lost England

“They’re doing the sort of things you’d expect from Labour.”
― Sebastian Payne, Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour's Lost England

“His story from there is a classic Conservative tale of entrepreneurship: on top of the weekly dole money, he was given additional funding attend a course to form a business plan. After beginning with a £40 a week grant for the first year of his business, his electrical company has celebrated twenty-six years of business.”
― Sebastian Payne, Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour's Lost England

“I’ll go into schools and give assemblies. I’m going to fill all these kids with aspiration, to try and cheer them,”
― Sebastian Payne, Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour's Lost England

“The difference it made to the psyche of the English working-class voter was remarkable. Suddenly, when England were playing football, on the housing estates of Newcastle, the crosses of St George were hanging out of bedroom windows.’ With devolution, Farage argued Blair had fostered a sense that ‘we should almost be ashamed to be English’.”
― Sebastian Payne, Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour's Lost England

“Despite being a privately educated stockbroker, Farage’s everyman image found the same appeal as Johnson’s.”
― Sebastian Payne, Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour's Lost England

“Anyone growing up in northern England who has attended a christening or child’s birthday party would feel at home.”
― Sebastian Payne, Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour's Lost England

“mug of strong tea and gesturing towards a tin of McVitie’s biscuits.”
― Sebastian Payne, Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour's Lost England

“She correctly deduced that Brexit was about ‘identity and belonging’ and ‘recognizing some of the legitimate concerns’ about how society had changed.”
― Sebastian Payne, Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour's Lost England