Fred > Fred's Quotes

“It’s a dark night, a heavy dew; the order rings from the Tannoy Speaker. ‘Fire.’ Daddy Wilson echoes ‘Fire!’ A colossal roar, gunners lean away to avoid the blast, some with hands over ears, the earth shakes, the momentum of the crew carried them automatically to put another shell in, to discover the great gun was missing. They stood, nit-like, poised for action. ‘The bloody thing’s gone.’ It had indeed, bouncing backwards, over a cliff and crashing 50 feet below, just missing the tent of a sleeping Gunner Secombe of 321 Bty, 132 Field Regt. Like the Nazarene, the Sergeant, carrying an oil lamp was given to going among 25 Pounder gunners ‘and he sayeth “Blessed are they that have seen 7.2?” “What colour was it?” And he hitteth them.”
― Spike Milligan, 'Rommel?' 'Gunner Who?': A Confrontation in the Desert

“Many of these books were quite good, most were middle-of-the-road, and a few brought to mind a review by Dorothy Parker, in which she stated, “This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
― J. Michael Straczynski, Becoming a Writer, Staying a Writer: The Artistry, Joy, and Career of Storytelling

“The same applies to other venues; without the written word, book publishers, magazines, blogs, and game designers have nothing to do and would swiftly go out of business. Everything starts with the word, and they know it.”
― J. Michael Straczynski, Becoming a Writer, Staying a Writer: The Artistry, Joy, and Career of Storytelling

“I felt as if I were plugged into the motherboard—the electric shock of unlimited potential shot through me.”
― Reggie Fils-Aimé, Disrupting the Game: From the Bronx to the Top of Nintendo

“I have a one hundred gigabyte memory,” said Slomo far too loud. “I think I can retain two dates.”
― Richard James, Space Precinct: Demeter City

“But there was nothing I could do about it now, having only soup for arms.”
― Garth Marenghi, Garth Marenghi’s TerrorTome

“In the corner of the field under some walnut trees, a heavily camouflaged cook-house is operating, and by the screams they are operating without an anaesthetic.”
― Spike Milligan, Mussolini: His Part in My Downfall

“An officer present, Noel Burdett, hearing Teske and me stating that we must have actually fired at each other that day, said, “Your survival indicates you must both be bloody awful shots.” Later Hans Teske dispelled the belief that Germans had no sense of humour by inscribing my menu “Dear Spike, sorry I missed you on February 26, 1943.”
― Spike Milligan, Mussolini: His Part in My Downfall

“Carlito has done this job for two years now and not a single person has ever been late. Except for Malcolm Weekes, who, as it turned out, had died in the lightbulb aisle in Robert Dyas.”
― Richard Osman, The Thursday Murder Club

“Not only the best historical, but the best Hartnell, and, in its serious handling of dramatic material in a truly dramatic style, arguably the best ever Doctor Who story.”
― Paul Cornell, The Doctor Who Discontinuity Guide

“The first episode of the story was remade between the third and the fourth as there was electronic interference on the tape of the original recording. (The episode was indeed remade, but the real reason was that talkback – i.e. the sound of instructions relayed to the studio floor from the control gallery – was picked up and clearly audible on the soundtrack of the original recording.)”
― David J. Howe, The Television Companion: Volume 1: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who

“Like most science-fiction writers, Trout knew almost nothing about science,”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Breakfast of Champions

“Our force had very rigid regulations, and carried in its pockets a standard working equipment consisting of police whistle, magnifying-glass, electric flashlight, handcuffs, (sometimes plain twine, but “handcuffs” for all that!) tin badge, (I have mine still!!) tape measure, (for footprints) revolver, (mine was the real thing, but Inspector Munroe (aet 12) had a water squirt-pistol while Inspector Upham (aet 10) worried along with a cap-pistol) and copies of all newspaper accounts of desperate criminals at large—plus a paper called The Detective, which printed pictures and descriptions of outstanding “wanted” malefactors.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters

“Like the college professor he was, Kittredge groped only for big words, and, finding no apt ones, he coined a lot of untranslatable new ones.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

“writing out a mood on paper so that it could be recaptured”
― H.P. Lovecraft, Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters

“for in following my natural inclination toward fantastic and imaginative fiction I have again stumbled upon a thing for which the majority care little.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters

“I was as close to the state of vegetation as any animal well can be—perhaps I might best have been compared to the lowly potato”
― H.P. Lovecraft, Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters

“And if there be any less obvious forces, I desire to know them and their relation to me as well. Foolish, do I hear you say? Undoubtedly! I had better be a consistent pragmatist: get drunk and confine myself to a happy, swinish, contented little world—the gutter—till some policeman’s No. 13 boot intrudes upon my philosophic repose. But I cannot. Why? Because some well-defined human impulse prompts me to discard the relative for the absolute.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters

“The Welsh, who have no Teutonic blood, are of little account.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters

“Therefore I invariably warn all bards—in the slang of the day—to be themselves; saying what they wish to say as they wish to say it, and allowing the masters to influence them only indirectly—broadening their sensitivenesses and capacities for imaginative experience rather than affecting their habits of utterance.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters

“Memory sometimes makes merciful deletions.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

“In utmost gravity and desperation, Charles Dexter Ward. P.S. Shoot Dr. Allen on sight and dissolve his body in acid. Don’t burn it.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, H. P. Lovecraft: The Complete Collection

“On the other hand, there were literally reams of symbols and formulae, historical notes and philosophical comment, in a crabbed penmanship absolutely identical with the ancient script of Joseph Curwen, though of undeniably modern dating. Plainly, a part of the latter-day programme had been a sedulous imitation of the old wizard’s writing, which Charles seemed to have carried to a marvellous state of perfection.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, H. P. Lovecraft: The Complete Collection

“We may guess that in dreams life, matter, and vitality, as the earth knows such things, are not necessarily constant; and that time and space do not exist as our waking selves comprehend them. Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Cthulhu Mythos Megapack: 40 Modern and Classic Lovecraftian Stories

“Kuranes sought for beauty alone. When truth and experience failed to reveal it, he sought it in fancy and illusion, and found it on his very doorstep, amid the nebulous memories of childhood tales and dreams.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, H. P. Lovecraft: The Complete Collection

“Iam writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone makes life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer; and shall cast myself from this garret window into the squalid street below. Do not think from my slavery to morphine that I am a weakling or a degenerate. When you have read these hastily scrawled pages you may guess, though never fully realise, why it is that I must have forgetfulness or death.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Complete Fiction

“They did not expect to hear Sir Alfred Jermyn emit a shrill, inhuman scream, or to see him seize his clumsy antagonist with both hands, dash it to the floor of the cage, and bite fiendishly at its hairy throat. The gorilla was off its guard, but not for long, and before anything could be done by the regular trainer the body which had belonged to a baronet was past recognition.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, H. P. Lovecraft: The Complete Collection

“Writing on what my doctor tells me is my deathbed, my most hideous fear is that the man is wrong.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, H. P. Lovecraft: The Complete Collection

“Through patient glibbering he made inquiries regarding his vanished friend, and found he had become a ghoul of some prominence in abysses nearer the waking world.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, H. P. Lovecraft: The Complete Collection

“There, on a tombstone of 1768 stolen from the Granary Burying Ground in Boston, sat the ghoul which was once the artist Richard Upton Pickman. It was naked and rubbery, and had acquired so much of the ghoulish physiognomy that its human origin was already obscure. But it still remembered a little English, and was able to converse with Carter in grunts and monosyllables, helped out now and then by the glibbering of ghouls.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, H. P. Lovecraft: The Complete Collection