21 Quotes by Kate Fox

Basically we are descended from a long line of successful flirts and it is hard-wired into our brains. If we didn't initiate contact with the opposite sex, then we wouldn't reproduce, and the species would die out.

After all, eating is natural, but we don't all have good table manners.

The British male is either reticent, tongue-tied and awkward, or boorish and crass, and he usually consumes too much alcohol. English male flirting tends to be very circuitous, and involves a lot of insults rather than compliments.

They're interested in developing this statewide and thought they would start with us.

The effect would be that (the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality) could no longer assume discharge water of a certain quality is being put to beneficial use.

A truly English protest march would see us all chanting: 'What do we want? GRADUAL CHANGE! When do we want it? IN DUE COURSE!

During the London riots in August 2011, I witnessed looters forming an orderly queue to squeeze, one at a time, through the smashed window of a shop they were looting. They even did the ‘paranoid pantomime’, deterring potential queue-jumpers with disapproving frowns, pointed coughs and raised eyebrows. And it worked. Nobody jumped the queue. Even amid rioting and mayhem – and while committing a blatant crime – the unwritten laws of queuing can be ‘enforced’ by a raised eyebrow.

The principal effect of globalisation, as far as I can tell, has been an increase in nationalism and tribalism, a proliferation of struggles for independence, devolution and self-determination, and a resurgence of concern about ethnicity and cultural identity in almost all parts of the world, including the so-called United Kingdom.

The reasons for our prolific understating are not hard to discover: our strict prohibitions on earnestness, gushing, emoting and boasting require almost constant use of understatement.