Tom > Tom's Quotes

“It will be some time before I realise that in acting, as in many jobs, a) you get better results when you collaborate instead of compete, and b) given the choice, only cunts prefer to compete.”
― Robert Webb, How Not To Be a Boy

“Just like a male’s large size being a strength in polygynous species, the ability to bond with sexual partners and their offspring is a strength in ours. And the more our ancestors bonded, the better they did. The more they loved each other, the harder they worked to provide and keep everyone alive and stop baby falling in the river and things like that.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“There is no fate, there are no souls or stars crossing or ‘The Ones’. Our powerful emotion is an inbuilt survival tactic. It’s a primordial glue, sticking us together to continue the species.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“women who’ve had breast enlargements are two to three times more likely to commit suicide than women who haven’t.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“It’s perverse that the finest compliment given to a woman who has just made a person is that she looks like she hasn’t.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“a meta-study of developing and developed world nations found that the presence of a maternal grandmother was more beneficial for the survival and health of children than any other relative except a mother – that, statistically, kids are better off with a grandma around than a father.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“I guess this combination of ‘birth is the most natural thing in the world’ and ‘birth is agonising and dangerous and can kill everyone involved’ is difficult for us to absorb.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“What strikes me now is why did they send the boys away? Why don’t boys get educated about menstruation? Is it because the teachers think girls will be embarrassed? I feel like the secrecy of it, the action of segregating us, sends the message that we should be ashamed. That our periods are something to hide from the opposite sex.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“I am a modern lady, a cutting-edge, very recent woman. And yet the only menstrual blood I have ever seen is my own. Is that weird? I can see sex on all the movies and TV programmes, I can watch murders being enacted and people pretending to shit themselves in the street, yet no periods.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“Things like drinking and smoking make it worse – I had always known this but not understood why; your liver balances the hormones in your blood (or tries to) and when it’s working on stored alcohol (which it has to if you drink more than one unit per hour) then the hormones can become more unbalanced. Interesting, huh? And annoying, because downing wine and hoping it will make everything better is one of my favourite nonsensical behaviours.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“but for me, my very definition of sex is a meeting of equals. When it is not that, it is something else.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“women’s bodies respond to all kinds of sexual stimuli not always because they want to have sex, but because sex might ensue anyway. That lubrication is not an ‘I’m turned on’ signal so much as an ‘I don’t want to be damaged’ response. And we evolved it because we had to.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“These ‘historical’ texts made us angry because they didn’t feel like a reflection of some other time, but of our own.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“You cannot give somebody permission to force you to do things, any more than you can allow yourself to be overpowered.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“Our culture has trained us all to interpret males as active and females as passive, but in almost every species I have read about it is the female that initiates sex. They do this with pheromones and scents and behaviours and they get males excited and then yes, sometimes she’ll have him follow her around for hours or kick and bite him, but that’s to ensure that he is fit for purpose.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“Do you think it is better to be punched in the face by someone you like?”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“But I can remember how grown-up I felt then, and earlier, since about nine. Because we age one way, in one direction, every age we are is the most grown-up we’ve ever been.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“But maybe all of us understanding more about why bad things happen can help us stop them?”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“we ensure our own survival at all costs, but survival has always involved each other. Empathy is a muscle that can be improved if you work at it.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“As I never tire of telling anyone who’ll listen – you never regret a run. But when do you start enjoying them?”
― Vassos Alexander, Don't Stop Me Now: 26.2 Tales of a Runner’s Obsession

“But I never did much running again until I signed up to do an ultra-marathon when I was on Blue Peter in 2008. 78 miles in 24 hours. At the time I wasn’t really running at all. I had never done a marathon, but I think that was good, because I didn’t realise how hard it would be to do three.”
― Vassos Alexander, Don't Stop Me Now: 26.2 Tales of a Runner’s Obsession

“And also, I think generally I like running because it lets me enjoy my food more.”
― Vassos Alexander, Don't Stop Me Now: 26.2 Tales of a Runner’s Obsession

“Neither of them is going to become a seriously good athlete, but that’s totally not the point. They don’t need to, or want to. They do need – and want – to be the best that they can be.”
― Vassos Alexander, Don't Stop Me Now: 26.2 Tales of a Runner’s Obsession

“I am here, with this muddy dog, on this woody hillside, concentrating on where to place this next footstep among this unruly tangle of tree roots. The here and now. The journey not the destination.”
― Vassos Alexander, Don't Stop Me Now: 26.2 Tales of a Runner’s Obsession

“It’s like the saying among airline pilots that the best flying team has three components: a pilot, a computer and a dog. The computer is there to fly the plane, the pilot is there to feed the dog. And the dog is there to bite the human if it tries to touch the computer.”
― Hannah Fry, Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine

“ZUCK: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard ZUCK: Just ask. ZUCK: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses … [REDACTED FRIEND’S NAME]: What? How’d you manage that one? ZUCK: People just submitted it. ZUCK: I don’t know why. ZUCK: They ‘trust me’ ZUCK: Dumb fucks1”
― Hannah Fry, Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine

“It’s rarely obvious what our data can do, or, when fed into a clever algorithm, just how valuable it can be. Nor, in turn, how cheaply we were bought.”
― Hannah Fry, Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine

“people who had Clubcards spent 4 per cent more overall than those who didn’t.”
― Hannah Fry, Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine

“What scares me about this,’ he said, ‘is that you know more about my customers in three months than I know in 30 years.’3 Clubcard was rolled out to all customers of Tesco”
― Hannah Fry, Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine

“Well, there were a few items in someone’s basket that were linked to low claim rates. The most significant, he told me, the one that gives you away as a responsible, houseproud person more than any other, was fresh fennel.”
― Hannah Fry, Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine