A Quite Interesting Book ADVANCED BANTER THE QI BOOK OF QUOTATIONS John Lloyd and John Mitchinson CONTENTS Title Page PROLOGUE | Stephen Fry PROVERB | Alan Davies PREAMBLE | John Lloyd and John Mitchinson A Acting Action Adventure Advertising Advice Afterlife Age Aliens Ambition America American cities Anger Animals Antarctica Anxiety Apathy Apes Apples Architecture Arguments Art Artichokes Artists Astrology Astronomy Atheism Atoms Attention Attitude Autobiography Awards B Banking Beauty Belief The Bible Birds Books Boredom Boxing Brain Bureaucracy Business Butterflies C Cabbage California Canada Candles Careers Cars Catastrophes Cathedrals Cats Cats and Dogs Celery Certainty Chairs Champagne Chance Change Character Cheerfulness Cheese Chemistry Chess Chickens Children Chocolate Christianity Cigars Civilisation Clarity Cleverness Clowns Coffee Colour Comedy Committees Communism Composers Computers Consciousness Conversation Cosmology Courage Cows Creation Creativity Crime Criticism Crying Curiosity D Daffodils Dancing Danger Dating Daughters Death Decisions Democracy Desire Desperation Destiny Diamonds Diaries Dictators Dieting Differences Difficulty Diplomacy Discoveries Divorce Doctors Dogs Doubt Drawing Dreams Drink Drugs Drunks Duty E Ears Earth Economics Education Effort Eggs Ego Electricity Encouragement Ends Enemies England Enlightenment Enthusiasm Equality Events Evil Evolution Excuses Exercise Experience Expressions Eyes F Faces Facts Failure Faith Fame Families Fashion Fathers Fear Fish Flowers Food Football Forgetfulness Forgiveness Freedom Free Speech Free Will Friendship Fun Future G Gardening Genius Geometry Giving God Gods Golf Goodness Gossip Government Grass Gravity Greatness Greeks H Habit Hands Happiness Hatred Heaven Hell Historians History Honesty Hope Housework Human Beings Human Body Human Nature Humility Humour I Ideas Idleness Ignorance Illness Imagination Impossibility Insignificance Inspiration Integrity Intelligence Interestingness Internet Intuition Inventions Investments J Jokes Journalism Joy Judgement K Kindness Knowledge L Language Last Words Laughter Laws Lawyers Leadership Learning Legs Life Light Listening Literature Living Logic Loneliness Love Luck Lying M Machinery Madness Magic Magnetism Manners Marriage Mathematics Meaning Memory Men Men and Women Mind Miracles Misery Mistakes Money Morality Mothers Mountains Movies Music Musical Instruments Musicians Mystery N Nationalities Nature Neurosis Newspapers Night Normality Nothingness Numbers O Obviousness Opera Opinions Originality P Painters Painting Paradox Parents Patience Peace Peanuts Pencils Personality Persuasion Philosophy Photography Physics Places Play Pleasure Plots Poetry Politicians Politics Popes Possessions Potatoes Practice Prayer Predictions Presidents Principle Prison Problems Procrastination Progress Proverbs Psychology Purpose Q Quality Questions Quotations R Rain Reality Reason Relativity Religion Research Revenge Risk Rules S Science Sculpture Sea Seeing Self Self-knowledge Sentimentality Sex Sheep Shoes Silence Simplicity Sin Size Sleep Smell Smoking Snowflakes Solitude Sorrow Soul Sound Space Speech Speeches Speed Spirals Sports Stars Stories Strangeness Statistics Stupidity Style Success Suffering Suicide Superstition Surprise T Taste Tea Teachers Technology Television Theories Things Thinking Time Tools Towns Travel Treachery Trees Trouble Trust Truth U Ugliness Umbrellas Understanding Universe V Vegetables Vegetarianism Violence Virtue W War Water Wealth Weather Weeds Whisky Wind Windows Wine Wisdom Wit Women Words Work Worry Writing Y Yes and No Youth Z Zen About the Author Also by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson Copyright PROLOGUE Stephen Fry They say that Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the last person to read everything. By the time he died there were now too many books, they suggest, for any one single brain to engage with. ‘They’, as usual, are wrong. There were already millions of books in Europe by the year 1500, just half a century after the first printed page flew from the first press. To read a million books in a lifetime you would have to read forty a day for seventy years. I couldn’t even manage half that amount for half as long with cigarettes before giving up and it takes a lot longer to read a book than to smoke a cigarette, let me tell you. Philosophers, wits, novelists, cooks, poets, essayists, herbalists, mathematicians, builders, poets and divines had poured out more thoughts in that first fifty years than had been committed to paper or vellum in the previous thousand. And the rate only continued to increase as it approached this century’s dizzyingly insane levels of oversupply. With so much flowing from so many different human brains, who can be arsed to read it? Not I, sir and madam, not I. It’s all I can do to peruse the side of a packet of breakfast cereal without distraction from radio, television and phone. I have no doubt you are in the same case. You would dearly like to suck intellectual and metaphysical juice from the fruity flesh of the world’s best thinkers and writers but the treetops are all out of reach and it would be too much of a fag to go and fetch a ladder. If only someone would pick, pulp and squeeze that fruit for you, you have been thinking – not the usual anthologisers, but those splendid elves from the Quite Interesting team, the fruits of whose labours are offered with such satisfying and repetitive regularity on the BBC and channels Dave, Mike, Pete, Steve and Neville. Your wish has been answered in the quote interesting volume even now stuffed up your pullover as you streak for the bookshop’s security barrier. There has never been a collection like it. Look in vain for the obvious, the banal and the platitudinous. On every page you will marvel at ‘what oft was thought but ne’er so well expressed’. And you can quote me. Biarritz, Dublin and Hell PROVERB Alan Davies A small pie is soon eaten. PREAMBLE John Lloyd and John Mitchinson Before you settle down, we have a confession to make. We love quotations. Not like, admire or retain a residual fondness for. We love them with a deep, never- to-be-fully-sated passion – the passion of men who spend too long cooped up indoors, burrowing through books and staring at screens. Quotations are our catnip. The more we have, the more we want. There’s an old craftsman’s saw: ‘If the other fellow can do it better, let him.’ That’s how we feel about quotations. They are the best bits of the best minds, the records of the funniest, truest, wisest and most memorable things anyone has ever said. A good quotation is a keyhole view of a boundless universe, like one of those windows called ‘squints’ in medieval cathedrals through which only the altar is visible. Using quotations isn’t a mark of cowardice, inarticulacy or false modesty. It’s a demonstration of what sets us humans apart: our ability to learn from one another, to share, to talk and to remember. As you’ll discover, there are people who exist only on the pages of quotation books, whose life and work has evaporated completely leaving behind just one or two tiny puddles of wisdom. Indeed, the strange and magical process by which we all seem to find the same things interesting also works for quotations. As Elias Canetti put it: ‘The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other well.’ So, don’t be expecting a reference book. It might look like one, but it’s really a manifesto. It could have been ten times longer but we have forced ourselves to keep only the ones we couldn’t live without, and then – painfully – to put them in some kind of order. Whether it’s punch-the-air exactness of thought (‘Erotica is using a feather, pornography is using the whole chicken,’ Isabel Allende), subversive humour (‘Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them,’ Flannery O’Connor) or unexpected, disarming honesty (‘I love those decadent wenches who do so trouble my dreams,’ Rembrandt), every quote has fought to justify its inclusion here. As for how you use it, all we’ll say is that you can’t have a conversation on your own. Banter is not a solitary activity. And quotations are the hard currency