Malcolm Bradbury Quotes

• With sociology one can do anything and call it work

  Malcolm Bradbury

  Sociology, Can Do

  Malcolm Bradbury (1978). “Eating people is wrong”, Vintage

  49 Copy quote

• Culture is a way of coping with the world by defining it in detail.

  Malcolm Bradbury

  Details, Culture, World

  16 Copy quote

• Here we have a saying: a good friend is someone who visits you when you are in prison. But a really good friend is someone who comes to hear your lectures.

  Malcolm Bradbury

  Good Friend, Visits You, Lectures

  Malcolm Bradbury (2012). “Rates of Exchange”, p.140, Pan Macmillan

  10 Copy quote

• If God had been a liberal, we wouldn't have had the Ten Commandments - we'd have the Ten Suggestions.

  Malcolm Bradbury

  Suggestions, Liberalism, Ten Commandments

  10 Copy quote

• Marriage is the most advanced form of warfare in the modern world.

  Malcolm Bradbury

  Love, Sexy, Warfare

  Malcolm Bradbury (1976). “The history man: a novel”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

  8 Copy quote

• On many American campuses the only qualification for admission was the ability actually to find the campus and then discover a parking space.

  Malcolm Bradbury

  Education, Space, Campus

  8 Copy quote

• English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did.

  Malcolm Bradbury

  Father, Hate, Men

  Malcolm Bradbury (2012). “Stepping Westward”, p.168, Pan Macmillan

  10 Copy quote

• To put it another way: a conference is an elite meeting on equal terms; a congress is a group of elites meeting on opposite terms; a convention is a mob meeting on equal terms; a course is an elite instructing a mob; and a colloquium is a group capable of considering all these phenomena.

  Malcolm Bradbury

  Opposites, Way, Groups

  4 Copy quote

• Only the old are innocent. That is what the Victorians understood, and the Christians. Original sin is a property of the young. The old grow beyond corruption very quickly.

  Malcolm Bradbury

  Christian, Innocence, Sin

  Malcolm Bradbury (2012). “Stepping Westward”, p.38, Pan Macmillan

  8 Copy quote

• But you are involved in the world, and your actions have consequences for other people, and if you don't recognize that, then that's the supreme kind of cruelty. Everyone shares someone else's fate to some extent.

  Malcolm Bradbury

  Fate, Actions Have Consequences, People

  Malcolm Bradbury (2012). “Eating People is Wrong”, p.172, Pan Macmillan

  10 Copy quote

• Most beds aren't as intimate as people think they are.

  Malcolm Bradbury

  Thinking, People, Bed

  Malcolm Bradbury (2017). “The History Man: Picador Classic”, p.141, Pan Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

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

  Malcolm Bradbury

  Funny, Humor, World

  Malcolm Bradbury (2012). “Eating People is Wrong”, p.77, Pan Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

• Life is a crisis - so what!

  Malcolm Bradbury

  Problem, Life Is, Problem Solving

  8 Copy quote

• The whole point of marriage is to stop you getting anywhere near real life. You think it's a great struggle with the mystery of being. It's more like being smothered in warm cocoa. There's sex, but it's not what you think. Marvellous, for the first fortnight. Then every Wednesday. If there isn't a good late-night concert on the Third. Meanwhile you become a biological functionary. An agent of the great female womb, spawning away, dumping its goods in your lap for succour. Daddy, daddy, we're here, and we're expensive.

  Malcolm Bradbury

  Sex, Real, Struggle

  8 Copy quote

• Genitals are a great distraction to scholarship

  Malcolm Bradbury

  Distraction, Scholarship

  Malcolm Bradbury (2011). “Cuts”, p.47, Pan Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

• The better class of Briton likes to send his children away to school until they're old and intelligent enough to come home again. Then they're too old and intelligent to want to.

  Malcolm Bradbury

  Children, Home, School

  Malcolm Bradbury (2012). “Rates of Exchange”, p.184, Pan Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

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

  Malcolm Bradbury

  Discovery, Interesting, World

  Malcolm Bradbury (2012). “Stepping Westward”, p.50, Pan Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

• You Liberals think that goats are just sheep from broken homes.

  Malcolm Bradbury

  Broken Heart, Home, Thinking

  12 Copy quote

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

  Malcolm Bradbury

  Lying, Deceit, Telling The Truth

  Malcolm Bradbury (2012). “Stepping Westward”, p.172, Pan Macmillan

  53 Copy quote

• 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.

  Malcolm Bradbury

  Reading, Sleep, Wife

  Malcolm Bradbury (2012). “Stepping Westward”, p.40, Pan Macmillan

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Malcolm Bradbury

  Book, Way, Stealing

  Malcolm Bradbury (1978). “Eating people is wrong”, Vintage

  19 Copy quote

• I've noticed your hostility towards him... I ought to have guessed you were friends.

  Malcolm Bradbury

  Friendship, Bad Friend, Funny Friend

  Malcolm Bradbury (2011). “The History Man”, p.87, Pan Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

• If God had meant us to have group sex, I guess he'd have given us all more organs.

  Malcolm Bradbury

  Sex, Groups, Given

  "Who do you think you are?: stories and parodies".

  4 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

David Lodge

Kingsley Amis

Angus Wilson

Tom Sharpe

Jim Crace

Ian Mcewan

Kazuo Ishiguro

Edward St Aubyn