A. N. Wilson Quotes

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A. N. Wilson

Profession : Writer

Birth : October 27, 1950

I might be deceiving myself but I do not think that I do have an inordinate fear of death.

A. N. Wilson

The United States is the ultimate land of optimistic promise, but it also gave birth to quintessentially pessimistic tragedy: 'Moby-Dick.'

A. N. Wilson

I think one of the very frightening things about the regime of the National Socialists is that it made people happy.

A. N. Wilson

I wanted passionately to be a priest.

A. N. Wilson

Reading about Queen Victoria has been a passion of mine since, as a child, I came across Laurence Housman's play 'Happy and Glorious,' with its Ernest Shepard illustrations.

A. N. Wilson

On the rare occasions when I spend a night in Oxford, the keeping of the hours by the clock towers in New College, and Merton, and the great booming of Tom tolling 101 times at 9 pm at Christ Church are inextricably interwoven with memories and regrets and lost joys. The sound almost sends me mad, so intense are the feelings it evokes.

A. N. Wilson

It would no doubt be very sentimental to argue - but I would argue it nevertheless - that the peculiar combination of joy and sadness in bell music - both of clock chimes, and of change-ringing - is very typical of England. It is of a piece with the irony in which English people habitually address one another.

A. N. Wilson

I do not find it easy to articulate thoughts about religion. I remain the sort of person who turns off 'Thought for the Day' when it comes on the radio.

A. N. Wilson

There is no doubt that, since 1977 and the launch of Apple II - the first computer it produced for the mass market - many things which used to be done on paper, or on the telephone, have been done easier and faster on a screen.

A. N. Wilson

I've never had a study in my life. I'm like Jane Austen - I work on the corner of the dining table.

A. N. Wilson

I am shy to admit that I have followed the advice given all those years ago by a wise archbishop to a bewildered young man: that moments of unbelief 'don't matter,' that if you return to a practice of the faith, faith will return.

A. N. Wilson

I've got nothing very original to say myself.

A. N. Wilson

Truth comes to us mediated by human love.

A. N. Wilson

My kind publishers, Toby Mundy and Margaret Stead of Atlantic Books, have commissioned me to write the life of Queen Victoria.

A. N. Wilson

Everyone writes in Tolstoy's shadow, whether one feels oneself to be Tolstoyan or not.

A. N. Wilson

It is remarkable how easily children and grown-ups adapt to living in a dictatorship organised by lunatics.

A. N. Wilson

I'm like Jane Austen - I work on the corner of the dining table.

A. N. Wilson

'In Memoriam' has been my companion for all my grownup life.

A. N. Wilson

Tennyson seems to be the patron saint of the wishy washies, which is perhaps why I admire him so much, not only as a poet, but as a man.

A. N. Wilson

If you read about Mussolini or Stalin or some of these other great monsters of history, they were at it all the time, that they were getting up in the morning very early. They were physically very active. They didn't eat lunch.

A. N. Wilson