153 Quotes by A. N. Wilson

It is the woman – nearly always – in spite of all the advances of modern feminism, who still takes responsibility for the bulk of the chores, as well as doing her paid job. This is true even in households where men try to be unselfish and to do their share.

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

Watching a whole cluster of friends, and my own mother, die over quite a short space of time convinced me that purely materialist ‘explanations’ for our mysterious human existence simply won’t do – on an intellectual level.

I’m boring. My beliefs are neither here nor there.

In universities and intellectual circles, academics can guarantee themselves popularity – or, which is just as satisfying, unpopularity – by being opinionated rather than by being learned.

I don’t write books inadvertently.

I suppose if I’d got a brilliant first and done research I might still be a don today, but I hope not. People become dons because they are incapable of doing anything else in life.

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.

The scribbler's life is never done.