A. A. Gill quotes

A. A. Gill

"Women's handbags are incredibly heavy. You rarely get to pick one up and, when you do, you wonder why anyone carries so much stuff around all day."
A. A. Gill
Women You Day Wonder
"If you're bored, it's because someone else is fulfilling his dream. Become a bore. It's the most interesting thing you'll ever do."
A. A. Gill
You Dream Bored Someone
"Shorts are silly. Men in shorts are silly men. And silly is the very worst thing a man can be."
A. A. Gill
Man Men Worst Silly
"The French are never happy coming to London; this is an ancient and comforting enmity."
A. A. Gill
Never Happy Coming Ancient
"I don't remember ever stealing things, but I suppose I was endlessly borrowing money off people."
A. A. Gill
People Money Remember Things
"The measure of a man's life is how he copes with the terrible wall of fear."
A. A. Gill
Life Man Fear Measure
"There are five great ages of man - five moments when you need to reevaluate everything, clear out the cupboard and the wardrobe, and most importantly, your head. They are 13, 20, 30, 40 and 60. All men need to know this."
A. A. Gill
Man You Great Men
"A cravat is the only item of named after Croatians. Balkan mercenaries were brought to Paris by Louis XIV. Their strange and exotic attire attracted the French bon hommes, who were wearing formal ruffs, and who immediately took to the simple and relaxed military cloth tied at the neck."
A. A. Gill
Simple Who Strange Only
"I generally only eat one meal a day, which is pretty unusual for a restaurant reviewer. It's not that I have a problem with food; I'll eat anything that doesn't involve a bet, a dare, or an initiation ceremony."
A. A. Gill
Day Food Restaurant Anything
"London is a city of ghosts; you feel them here. Not just of people, but eras. The ghost of empire, or the blitz, the plague, the smoky ghost of the Great Fire that gave us Christopher Wren's churches and ushered in the Georgian city."
A. A. Gill
You Great People Fire
"Bald isn't like being ethnic or disabled. Everyone can and will make jokes about it and expect you to laugh good-naturedly, which you will."
A. A. Gill
You Will Laugh Bald
"As handbags get ever more absurdly large, so they need to carry more stuff to validate the expense of this huge trunk with chains, buckles and padlocks on."
A. A. Gill
More Chains Handbags Need
"People collect boredom, they hoard it, they wallow in it, hoping that one day it'll be of interest and become an effete ennui. Let me tell you, it doesn't."
A. A. Gill
Me You People Day
"Suits are malevolent magicians' sleeves for socialists, full of patrician loops and tricks, small, embroidered, cryptic messages of deference and privilege. They are ever the uniform of the enemy. They are also the greatest British invention ever."
A. A. Gill
Enemy Uniform Privilege Small
"When I joined the Sunday Times the people I was competing with were all 10 or 15 years younger, they all had double firsts from Oxford or Cambridge, they were all bright as new pins."
A. A. Gill
People New Bright Sunday
"Penicillin and plastic bags help a lot, fridges and hot water make manliness more comfortable and Tom Ford's fragrance range makes it smell better, but the idea that has pushed our lives into the light more than any other -ism or -ology is feminism."
A. A. Gill
Light Water Better Hot
"Because there is no better tool for writing than experience. It has very little to do with grammar and everything to do with knowing."
A. A. Gill
Experience Better Everything Writing
"Personal adornment is the only cultural form that everybody in the world takes part in."
A. A. Gill
World Only Personal Everybody
"If New York is a wise guy, Paris a coquette, Rome a gigolo and Berlin a wicked uncle, then London is an old lady who mutters and has the second sight. She is slightly deaf, and doesn't suffer fools gladly."
A. A. Gill
Wise New Deaf Who
"The part that makes you unique is the bit people will like or fear, fall in love with, or try to avoid."
A. A. Gill
Love You People Fear
"Mourning the loss of the phone call is like pining for buggy driving or women in hats or three-martini lunches. They've gone."
A. A. Gill
Women Phone Phone Call Like
"Mr. Obama is the only popular politician left in the world. He would win an election in any one of the G-20 countries, and his fellow world leaders will do anything to take home a touch of that reflected popularity."
A. A. Gill
World Home Election Win
"Learning Jimmy Carr riffs off by heart is not the way to anyone's heart, unless you're Jimmy Carr. And remember, the two most attractive things in a man is a sense of danger and being able to make a girl feel really safe."
A. A. Gill
Heart Man Learning You
"I don't do dinner parties. I have people come to share the food I've cooked for the family."
A. A. Gill
Family People Food Dinner
"When Americans come to London they usually say how much they love the history, the tradition, the splendid tumpty-tum of things whose very repetition has become their point."
A. A. Gill
Love History Repetition Tradition
"I'm terribly prone to anxiety. I get very depressed and I get very anxious and my anxiety is almost always about my children."
A. A. Gill
Children Always Anxiety About
"So much of life is not about whether you're good or bad, or right or wrong, or can afford or not afford - it's just about timing."
A. A. Gill
Life Good You Bad
"Clothes maketh the man. They don't make you some other man."
A. A. Gill
Man You Clothes Make
"When you look at traditions closely, examine what they really are, you realize they're made up of layers and layers of deferrals, delays, indecisions, tomorrows and long lunches."
A. A. Gill
Long You Look Realize
"Everyone has to go to a funeral at some time and you need to be dark and sombre, and in a black tie."
A. A. Gill
You Time Black Go
"I don't have prejudices against anybody. I have opinions, based on a lifetime's experience."
A. A. Gill
Experience Opinions Against Lifetime
"Trying to learn to be a good man is like learning to play tennis against a wall. You are only a good man - a competent, capable, interesting and lovable man - when you're doing it for, or with, other people."
A. A. Gill
Good Man Learning You
"Being able to afford everything you desire is not, by any means, the worst thing that can happen to you. But, depressingly, and more profoundly, neither is it the best."
A. A. Gill
Best You Desire Everything
"The more there is on offer, the more you don't want. Fifty options of cereal does not hone an epicurean expertise in the finer points of puffed rice, it murders appetite."
A. A. Gill
You Want More Rice
"I don't go to the openings of shops or parties given by people I don't know."
A. A. Gill
People Go Know Given
"You see, the problem with Dave Cameron is that people know who he is. The less people know about him, the more he's likely to get re-elected."
A. A. Gill
You People Who See
"You don't have a choice about fashion or aesthetics - you're in it, whether you like it or not."
A. A. Gill
You Fashion Like Choice
"I don't know if English is the only language where some expressions only and solely mean the opposite of what they say but we do have an awful lot of them."
A. A. Gill
Language Know They Say Mean
"Boredom is not a thing. It's not a feeling or a condition. It is the absence of feelings, things and conditions."
A. A. Gill
Feeling Boredom Feelings Things
"I can tell very quickly when people are lying."
A. A. Gill
People I Can Tell Lying
"Writing, for me, is the great organiser. It's while writing that I think most deeply about things."
A. A. Gill
Me Great Think Writing
"I'm frightened of my innate vanity. I mean: the suits lined with scarves? Even I know the warning signs. I could quite easily end up in a tiny Playboy mansion, all on my own."
A. A. Gill
End Know Vanity Warning
"All people from small islands dance funny."
A. A. Gill
Funny People Dance Small
"And learn to tie a bow - it's not difficult and there's no excuse for either a clip-on or the hideous Hollywood straight tie."
A. A. Gill
Difficult Learn Hollywood Tie
"Nature gave you your look and there's only a limited amount you can do about that, but what you wear is the skin you choose for yourself."
A. A. Gill
Nature You Yourself Look
"No 13-year-old or over should ever be seen in trousers that finish above the ankle. It doesn't matter how good your legs are, or if you're on a beach in Bermuda where they invented the things."
A. A. Gill
Good You Matter Things
"It is impossible to be taken seriously in shorts. No one has ever cared about anything said by a man in shorts."
A. A. Gill
Man Impossible Anything About
"You can propose marriage naked or in handcuffs, but no one is going to agree to forsake all others for a man in shorts. You can't declare war in shorts or deliver a eulogy in shorts."
A. A. Gill
Man You War Marriage
"Cowboy boots you can't wear unless you actually are a cowboy or in a Status Quo tribute band, or over 60; there's something about a retiring gent in cowboy boots that looks sort of presidential."
A. A. Gill
You Something Tribute Looks

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