41 Quotes by Anthony McCarten

Loss, this was what he felt. Loss and deprivation. One man owns, another man craves - the craving far more passionate than the dull pleasures of ownership. How galling not to have when you were the type who deserved to have - yes, deserved.

Finally, it's not the lies we tell others that do the most damage, it's those we tell ourselves. From this all troubles rise.

We shall go on and we shall fight it out, here or elsewhere, and if this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.

And that’s when he saw, at last, why it was so sweet to be infinitesimal: because as we become nothing, beneath the stars, so too do our troubles.

Titanic orator. Drunk. Wit. Patriot. Imperialist. Visionary. Tank designer. Blunderer. Swashbuckler. Aristocrat. Prisoner. War hero. War criminal. Conqueror. Laughing stock. Bricklayer. Racehorse-owner. Soldier. Painter. Politician. Journalist. Nobel Prize-winning author. The list goes on and on, but each label, when taken alone, fails to do him justice; when taken together, they offer a challenge on a par with tossing twenty jigsaw puzzles together and expecting a single unified picture.

We're living in extraordinary times, all the time. The issues that assail us are perennial. They haven't changed since the Greeks picked up a pen.

Truth is seldom appreciated and never understood, whereas a flattering lie is always appreciated and instantly understood.

When I grew up, my house contained only two books: the Bible and the 'Edmonds' cookbook. We were a working-class household. Books were a poor second to the television, which was always on, usually with me in front of it.

Since my student days, I'd been a fan of those books with titles like 'Great Speeches that Changed the World,' as I loved the idea that the right person with the right words at the right time could really make a difference.