Malcolm Bradbury Quotes

"Well," said Dr Jochum, "you are like all reformers. You like to reform the world because it is easier than trying to reform yourself."

"We got a course in picknicking at the university," said Dr. Bourbon. "It's called Geology, but it's really picknicking."

[A]nd the traffic noise that boomed in through the window was another reminder of what his spirit knew, that he was but a grain of sand in someone else's desert.

I like the English. They have the most rigid code of immorality in the world.

All action leads to suffering, someone else's, or one's own.

Reading someone else's newspaper is like sleeping with someone else's wife. Nothing seems to be precisely in the right place, and when you find what you are looking for, it is not clear then how to respond to it.

My experience of ships is that on them one makes an interesting discovery about the world. One finds one can do without it completely.

The English are polite by telling lies. The Americans are polite by telling the truth.

I've often thought that my scruples about stealing books were the only thing that stood in the way of my being a really great scholar.

'It must be nice to think there is a true reality,' says Miss Callendar. 'I've always found reality a matter of great debate.'

Jochum had said, "You keep asking the universe 'How ought I to live?' But it can't answer."

Well, yes, surely I think everybody ought to enjoy life as much as it's humanly possible because that's why we exist. I believe.

You see, you are an optimist and live on hope. I am a pessimist and live on experience.

It had always seemed to Louis that a fundamental desire to take postal courses was being sublimated by other people into sexual activity.

'The trouble is, it's hard to know you're little,' says Felicity. 'People like to make themselves matter.'