40 Quotes by Christopher Hampton

The only unbearable thing is that nothing is unbearable.

There is a sort of theory that you should adapt bad books because they always make more successful films.

I have always thought of sophistication as rather a feeble substitute for decadence.

To seduce a woman famous for strict morals, religious fervor and the happiness of her marriage: what could possibly be more prestigious?

If I had to give a definition of capitalism I would say: the process whereby American girls turn into American women.

A great number of the disappointments and mishaps of the troubled world are the direct result of literature and the allied arts. It is our belief that no human being who devotes his life and energy to the manufacture of fantasies can be anything but fundamentally inadequate.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.

I always divide people into two groups. Those who live by what they know to be a lie, and those who live by what they believe, falsely, to be the truth.

You know very well that unless you're a scientist, it's much more important for a theory to be shapely, than for it to be true.