141 Quotes by A. A. Gill

The interesting adults are always the school failures, the weird ones, the losers, the malcontents, this isn’t wishful thinking. It’s the rule.

A broadsheet obituarist once pointed out to me that veteran soldiers die by rank. First to go are the generals, admirals and air marshals, then the brigadiers, then a bit of a gap and the colonels and wing commanders and passed-over majors, then a steady trickle of captains and lieutenants. As they get older and rarer, so the soldiers are mythologised and grow ever more heroic, until finally drummer boys and under-age privates are venerated and laurelled with honours like ancient field marshals. There is something touching about that.

The truth and the facts aren't necessarily the same thing. Telling the truth is the object of all art; facts are what the unimaginative have instead of ideas.

I still secretly believe that afternoons are the time for the test card and you shouldn't watch television when the sun is out.

Television in the 1960s & 70s had just as much dross and the programmes were a lot more tediously patronising than they are now. Memory truncates occasional gems into a glittering skein of brilliance. More television, more channels means more good television and, of course, more bad. The same equation applies to publishing, film and, I expect, sumo wrestling.

Breakfast is everything. The beginning, the first thing. It is the mouthful that is the commitment to a new day, a continuing life.

You either get the point of Africa or you don't. What draws me back year after year is that it's like seeing the world with the lid off.

Nobody ever forgets their first night in the bush. It's among the precious, meagre handful of life firsts that remain indelible.

Americans think the only funny Brits are John Cleese, Benny Hill and whoever makes our toothpaste. They're not laughing with us, they are laughing at us.